I mean, what am I going to do, not use PLASTIC, for God’s sake? Never ride in a car again because I didn’t see a commercial for steel? Never wear a cotton shirt because they didnt’ have a commercial for it?
Stupid things I’ve seen commercials for:
Milk
“Food in Cans”
Steel
Plastic
Cotton
I mean, who are they competing with, excactly?
Water?
“Food in Baggies”?
Aluminum?
Wood?
Polyester?
The company I work for has worked with some of these industries to help evaluate the effectiveness of this very advertising. The ads are typically paid for by industry groups made up of and supported by the various companies that make up the industry.
Often times the goal is just to raise awareness or change public opinion. One industry we worked with, for instance (I’d tell you which, but it would get me fired. Ask me again after I quit in two weeks. 
), ran ads touting how useful their substance is in various applications. Their goal was to get people to stop thinking of their industry as vile environment-destroying polluters and to get them to think of them as makers of lifesaving products instead.
Will it actually cause them to sell more stuff? Maybe not. But it just might prevent a few people from writing their congressman, demanding that the industry be shut down or put under tighter controls. And for them, that’s a Good Thing.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=11897
I’m not sure if this link will work, but I posted this very question once here before.
That’s what I love about this place - I never feel silly for asking these questions 'cause I know that other people are wondering the same thing. 
I’ve always found that type of ad annoying. What I wanted to say to them was, what’s your point? You are not trying to get me to buy a produce or service, so what’s the actual point of this ad? You want me to like your industry better? Why? Do you actually think my opinion of your industry is going to effect what I buy? And if you want me to like your industry, these ads are not going to accomplish that.
I had not considered that they might be trying to head me off from writing to my Congresscritter asking that their industry be more strictly regulated or something. It does not seem to me that any of these ads would succeed at that. I don’t think any of them would turn someone around who was already down on the industry in question; quite the contrary. The more you dislike the industry, the more you’ll be annoyed by their ads.
I imagine it’s for the same reason they advertise milk. To cast the product in a positive public light and encourage people to purchase it. As a slight hijak, some of these generic ad campaigns have been under attack in recent years because the government (who in some cases including the “got milk?” campaigns) pay for the ads by forcing producers of the product to pony up for them. Last year the Supreme Court struck down a mandatory fee for advertising mushrooms in response to a lawsuit from a mushroom grower who disagreed with the campaign. A dairy farmer has now sued to stop the manadatory charges for the “got milk?” ads. I’ll see if I can dig up a link (unless some intrepid Doper beats me to it).
Well, I can see the “don’t write to your congresscritter” argument for something like:
“Cyanide: It kills annoying bugs, not just people!”
or
“Uranium: It helps light your house!”
But cotton and milk aren’t likely to be banned by the government anytime soon.
Nothing you can say will make me lose hope.
What Smeghead said, plus a couple of other things:
*Basic staple commodities like cotton, milk, etc are pretty close to what economists call “Giffen goods”, that is, people tend to actually buy less of them as a proportion of their total expenditure as their income rises. In the case of some goods like potatoes, people actually by less of them in absolute terms as their income rises. Some of this generic advertising is an attempt to change the image of the products so people view them differently. This type of advertising seldom works and usually just ends up with producers money being thrown away although it may have a short term effect.
*Some of its also community p/r in the sense that aluminium smelters etc like to remind surrounding towns that “yes, we might be big and ugly but we provide 2000 jobs in this community”
Here in Florida the state has radio spots touting the benefits of horse ranching.
I have looked in all the stores and no one is selling horses, so are the ads a waste of money?
I can at least offer anecdotal evidence on milk’s behalf. Before the “Got Milk?” ads came out milk consumption was decreasing every year. Since the ads have appeared sales haven’t really gone up but they have also stopped going down. So the ads are at least working on some level.
Well, around here things have gone further than advertising steel, plastic and cotton. They advertise the Government (“We’re spending money on a bunch of TV and print ads to tell you about how we’ve got to cut back on Government spending!”) and the Post Office - a Government monopoly.
The US Government just raised import taxes on Steel. Don’t you think the Steel industry likes the idea that people think favorably about the US Steel industry so the electorate is supportive?
There are government programs supporting the US sugar, milk, cotton, etc industries. It probably pays to occasionally remind the electorate how good and important they are.
“When good fences don’t make for good neighbors, break out the Lead! Lead; it’s the metal Americans turn to in their moments of anger.”
So, whaddya think? Could I get a job writing pro-industry copy?
It also worked for cotton. Several years ago man-made fibers were taking over. Now cotton is back in favor.
I’ve been wondering about the fairly long-running campaign by BASF. You know, “We don’t make the carpet you buy, we make it softer.” Or some such thing. They go on and on about how they don’t make any of the end products, they just make various end products better in some way.
Is this just a plan to increase the stock price?
I don’t think milk or the “Got Milk?” campaigns are quite the same as the other examples in the OP. Advertising steel on TV when most people don’t buy just steel is sort of strange. Advertising MILK, a consumer product that people might or might not consume as opposed to orange juice, Coke, or bottled water, makes perfect sense. “Buy our beverage, not the other one.” What’s so confusing about that?
Now, as to the OP in a general sense, I think there’s more PR here than anything else, really. My company sells a product the general public does not buy (but companies do buy) but nevertheless we advertise to the general public, because public recognition of what we sell is good for our business, even if the effect is indirect.
It also helps us deal with government, who are almost impossible to get to do anything. And in our case it’s not that we want the government to lay off us; we’re a company that does things related to product safety. It’s hard to get the government to do ANYTHING, even something that has a huge public benefit and will save lives. I know everyone talks about globalization and how corporations are bad loss of democracy blah blah blah but in our case it’s the total opposite; we’re a not-for-profit corporation devoted to safety, and getting the government to agree to anything is nearly impossible. If I take a program to the government tomorrow that will save them $10 million and save 50 lives a year, there’s a 90% chance they’ll ignore it out of hand and if they don’t it will take them 3-5 years to implement it. Making the public aware of what we do and supportive of us improves those odds a little bit.
You also see these types of commercials featuring companies whose products you probably couldn’t buy if you wanted to. For example, BASF (We don’t make a lot of the products you buy…we make the products you buy BETTER!), Monsanto, and ADM (Supermarket to the World). I think they might be bids to encourage investment (read: increase stock price). Would buying a few ads on Sunday talking head shows be a cost effective way to encourage such activity?
Your social circle must be pretty small if you do not know anyone who favors one type of container over another or one type of material over another based on what they think are environmental or similar reasons and which, most of the time, are just perception and fashion which can be effectively influenced by these campaigns.
If you have never met someone who favors cotton shopping bags over plastic “because plastic pollutes and is not biodegradable” you really need to get out more.
Just a WAG on my part, but I’ve always believed commercials from companies that don’t make products for end consumers, such as BASF, are targeted at engineers, managers, purchasers, etc…, of other companies. If you were working on a new product, maybe a commercial would make you think of them when it comes time to source materials, for example.