Titled “The DeathZone”, the latest commercial campaign by Greenpeace Energy in Germany [Update on Jan. 12, 2010: I have just been contacted by one of the copywriters behind the campaign. The campaign is not actually run by Greenpeace, but was part of a project led by students of the Miami Ad School Europe, in Germany] aims at raising public awareness around the issues of aging nuclear reactors and the real dangers and safety threats associated to it, by referring to the Tchernobyl disaster and the remaining 32km2 exclusion zone (here called DeathZone) around the disaster site.

In addition to the video below, the DeathZone campaign includes a series of billboards, a balloon release event, and a virtual line to be drawn through the city of Hamburg at a radius of 32km2 as a symbolic representation of the DeathZone.

[ Update on Jan. 12, 2010: A more up-to-date and 'official' video is available here, with a clear disclaimer at the end notifying that this film is the work of students of Miami Ad School Europe.]

All in all, a campaign that could very well be a missed opportunity for Greenpeace Energy to further its goals and generate effective engagement around an important and rather urgent issue. I explain:

• The message is flawed. Scare tactics are used. The video and the billboards feed the public with apocalyptic images of nuclear disasters, of doom and despair … similar to any ‘end of the world’ movie you can think about. The title of the campaign says it all: DeathZone.

• What about the future? In the video, it says that “60% of Germans oppose the change in the law (i.e. canceling the “nuclear phase-out option”), but the vast majority still uses nuclear power”. Here is a big challenge…but Greenpeace totally fails to offer any solution or viable alternative. In a pure dramatic style, the campaign maximizes the problem and minimizes the solution (which is actually non-existent).

• Without any positive messages or any forward looking offer, this campaign might very well leave the public helpless/hopeless. And will unlikely generate behavior change or even enhance support for the anti-nuclear cause, whether from citizens/general public … or politicians.

After 16 ads of the day…I (sadly) feel like I am repeating myself, am I ? 

Credits: Advertising Agency: Miami Ad School Europe // Art Director: Zoe Sys Vogelius // Copywriters: Duncan Munge, Amadeus Henhapl

Source: Green Advertising Blog

Via a very smart use of optical illusion, the black-and-white ads show images formed out of lots of small pandas…but when taking a closer look… it then becomes clear that WWF is doing much more than “saving the panda” types of initiatives.

• Antelope Ad

[Headline] Saving pandas is not our only mission.
[Body Copy] The combined efforts of WWF and our partners have sparked the recovery of the Tibetan Antelope Population.
Take a closer look at what we do and where you can make a difference. www.wwfchina.org

• Forest Ad

[Headline] Saving pandas is not our only mission.
[Body Copy] Over 10 million hectares of forests have been protected through our forest certification and sustainable forest management programs.
Take a closer look at what we do and where you can make a difference. www.wwfchina.org

• Water Ad

[Headline]Saving pandas is not our only mission.
[Body Copy] WWF and our partners have facilitated the reconnection of 17 lakes to the Yangtze River, infusing new life to its fragile freshwater ecosystem.
Take a closer look at what we do and where you can make a difference. www.wwfchina.org

A great advert series – as a proof of its success, one year later the ads are still running here and there!

Credits: Advertiser: WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) // Agency: BBH China / Creative Director: Johnny Tan // Head of Copy: Leo Zhang // Senior Art Director: Yinbo Ma // Senior copywriters: Carol Ong, Leo Zhang // Agency Producer: Ken Wang // Illustrator: Alt Design // Market: China // Accounts Director: Jasmine Huang // Accounts Manager: Joyce Hong // Published: June 2008.

Tappening

The campaign is raising awareness but at the same points out to the practices (why not greenwashing? huh) of the bottled water/packaging industry. Pretty interesting, especially as the bottled water industry recently faced huge criticism and backlash in the US.

The ad series include:

*Bottled Water: 98% Melted Ice Caps. 2% Polar Bear Tears

*Bottled Water is the Primary Cause of Restless Leg Syndrome

*Bottled Water Causes Blindness in Puppies

*Bottled Water Makes Acid Rain Fall on Playgrounds

Advertising Agency: DiMassimo Goldstein, USA
Creative Director: Mark DiMassimo
Art Director: Chris Carlberg
Copywriter: Justin Prichard
Illustrator: Jan Kallwejt
Published: July 2009

Tappening’s campaign is largely viral in nature: it includes a Web site which enables users to share their own water-related lies and view the four Tappening ads above and ’share the lies’ via Facebook, Twitter, Digg or Email with their friends and family. Tappening is using the power of the internet and social media to spread the world with only $535,000 as campaign budget.  Other elements include wild postings in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and Las Vegas.

Before this current campagin, Tappening’s activist ad men released politically themed ads as the U.S. presidential race heated up:

The campaign was attacking the candidates bad habit of drinking bottled water wherever they went with this campaign.

Since its creation in 2001, Swiss-based not-for-profit organisation Act Responsible – Advertising Community Together whose goal is to “federate, promote and inspire responsible communication on sustainability, equitable development and social responsibility” – has been putting together a unique database of responsible ads (Press, outdoors, TV, cinema, interactive) featuring the best work for Charities, Public service and Commercial ads focusing on environmental and social issues.

Over the last 8 years, they have gathered a collection of 2,500 ads from over 40 countries and 140 agencies that are available on their online creative gallery you can visit here.

Below is a selection of ads that I find particularly creative, targeted or impactuful in raising awareness or enacting positive change.

An AWESOME campaign realized by Ogilvy & Mather in Shanghai, for UNICEF China to draw attention to the plight of homeless street children by inviting Haohui Zhou and Bing Liu (two great painters from Guangzhou who paint objects in a way that they seem to blend into their backgrounds) to paint children in a way as to make them almost invisible.  In China we indeed pass by those kids everyday but too often ignore them as if they were part of the background like cars or buildings… A very successful campaign which helped raise funds totaling approximately to USD 30,000 for UNICEF China.

Title: Stairs // Agency: Ogilvy & Mather Shanghai // Advertiser: UNICEF China // Campaign topic: Invisible child // Type: Print // Date of Publication: N/A

You can check the other ads of the same campaign here. I just love it!

Some other good ones:

It says (in French): “When we tell you that fishes go extinct, this is not a joke” in reference to April fools’ day.

Title: Poisson d’avril // Agency: Ogilvy & Mather Paris // Advertiser: WWF // Campaign topic: Overfishing & Biodiversity Conservation // Type: Print // Date of Publication: N/A

A famous one! Title: Save Paper, Save The Planet // Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi A/S Copenhagen // Advertiser: WWF // Campaign topic: Environment Protection // Type: Outdoor // Date of Publication: N/A

A simple message and compelling visual: save/don’t save.

Title: Turtle // Agency: Ogilvy & Mather Budapest // Advertiser: WWF // Campaign topic: Environment Protection // Type: Print // Date of Publication: 2005

For more, digg here. This creative gallery really offers a great selection of ads, from all over the world.

Swedish advertising company, Acne, put together a rather cool advertising campaign for Flygbussarna, a Swedish airport coach bus service, to encourage individual car drivers to take the coach bus instead.

:: Situation

Every day thousands of cars are driven to and from Swedish airports. Every car holds only 1,2 persons on average which is to be compared with the Airport Coach that takes over 50. No need to say that taking the coach has huge environmental benefits!!!

:: Creative Idea

In order to encourage the use of coaches, an installation made up of 50 wrecked cars resembling a Flygbussarna coach bus and was placed next to the highway leading to the Arlanda airport, the biggest Swedish airport. The installation was actually so effective in drawing people’s attention that it caused traffic jams and delays. and got widely reported in the news, social media space, etc.

The agency then smartly linked the outdoor installation to a website together with a banner campaign which was produced to reinforce and channel the messages, by providing real time figures and facts: a live camera broadcasted from the site for 24 hours a day over a two-month period, counting each car on the way to the airport and measuring how many buses they are equivalent to and how much less carbon dioxide would have been released if everyone had taken the bus instead.

:: Results

The media and the web quickly caught on and the campaign was at the core of many discussions on radio, television, blogs, social networking platforms, etc.

And quite frankly, among the general public the WED has not generated much ‘noise’ and traction, and thus probably failed to significantly meet its main goal: enhancing awareness and encouraging people to take action. (Except perhaps in France where the movie Home made quite a substantial impact, supposedly on the outcome of the EU elections in France!)

Indeed WED has quite a low profile, especially compared to WWF’s Earth Hour (March 28th, 2009), which has succeeded in actively engaging more than 1 billion people in1000 cities all over the world as people turned off their lights.

However, I still see some very encouraging stuff with this year’s WED as the UNEP has engaged for the very first time in social media with a pretty cool Twitter campaign. For every follower @UNEPandYou got by midnight on June 5 – World Environment Day – the UNEP will plant a tree, with a cap of 100,000 trees. In the end, they got about 10, 000 followers, including me.

It is a very positive sign:

• The Twitter campaign aimed at raising awareness of the WED initiative by not only getting followers, but also rewarding them with an actionable result = planting trees.

• The UN embraces social media and sees as a way to advance their agenda and engage citizens. It’s a very encouraging PR move, especially for such a low profile (again) UN programme, which is not famous for being well-funded, powerful and influential.

• Such campaign builds on the long term, and offers promising perspectives with the United Nations climate change talks in Copenhagen this December. Social media can powerfully be leveraged voice, channel the concerns of the world citizens on various social platforms so that they can altogether put pressure on national delegates to adopt a new Kyoto protocol and come up with actionable results if the concerns of the world citizens can be voiced, channeled online through various platforms.

However, to get there, @UNEPandYou will have to sustain engagement on Twitter and other platforms, have a long term social media strategy and build its profile. Because in the end, what is the point of having a WED if the rest of the year no ones cares…

To be followed…

 As lots of research showed it recently, it is important to frame the climate-change issue in a way that makes sense in people’s daily lives in order to ‘translate passive awareness into active concern’.

This for instance what this climate change awareness campaign below is all about: how to make sense in people’s daily life and how to show that change is needed now, and not later.

 However, will this campaign really fulfill its objectives? The approached used here might be insufficient in drawing positive behaviour change, worse it might create anxiety as many will indeed feel that it is already too late and that they will not be able to make a difference.

Hence my ‘?‘ in the blogpost title.

Any thoughts?

Credits: (Released: March 2009)

Advertising Agency: Ponto de Criação / fluor, São Paulo, Brazil

Creative Director / Copywriter: Guto Araki

Art Director: Reinaldo Pina

Illustrator: Tribbo Post

Photographer: Ricardo Carvalho

Audio: Comando-S