This paper investigates the social marketing of sustainability in New Zealand and examines the usefulness of advertising campaigns to enlist and empower people, as both consumers and citizens, towards environmental care. It draws on discussions about 'citizen-consumer subjectivities' and the model of the 'political economic person', which link sustainability and consumption through asserting people's capacities as reflecting citizens. Printed advertisements by local and national government agencies about air pollution, fuel dependency and energy consumption are analysed to see whether advertising campaigns can operate on multiple levels for a range of audiences -desirable for broadening understanding of sustainable consumption and dealing with the complexity and experiential aspects of 'doing' sustainability. The advertisements analysed have an authoritative dimension that downplays this complexity and variability. The paper concludes that these advertisements do not go far enough to involve individuals in processes of co-producing knowledge about sustainability, and to vest them with expertise in exercising sustainability in their daily lives. The implications are that advertising campaigns that engage with the complexity surrounding consumption in people's modern lives, and with variability in meanings of sustainability, have the possibility of inciting citizen-consumer political subjectivities.