Just been fired? Good time to clean a beach

Using a clumsy mortician to promote cleaner beaches might seem gravely odd, but I kind of dig this Surfrider PSA from Young & Rubicam in Paris (and director Kristoffer Borgli). Our hapless hero works—exceedingly poorly—in a funeral parlor, where his transgressions include dropping an urn in a plume of ashes and painting a corpse's face to make him look like a cross between a mime and a hooker (as if there were any real difference between the two). He also drops the insides of a sandwich into a casket. At least he doesn't pluck the food out of a dead body and continuing eating, like a certain Boost Mobile coroner did a couple of years ago. After being fired, the klutzy creamator chances upon a Surfrider beach cleanup, where he meets other incompetents—a surgeon, cop, soccer player and chef—who for some reason are still wearing their work clothes after being sacked. The moral of the story: "Picking up trash is something anyone can do." True, but even compared to toiling in a mortuary, it's a dead-end job.

Filed under Death, Environment, Gianatasio, PSAs
Permalink | Comments (1)

SunChips Canada has earplugs for loud bag

If you've been following the SunChips compostable-bag saga, you'll know Frito-Lay mostly scotched the environmentally friendly packaging in the U.S. after people said it was too damn loud and crinkly. (One person bizarrely compared the noise to that of a jet airplane.) In Canada, the brand is not caving so quickly. In fact, it's committed to keeping the noisy bag. In the video below, Frito-Lay Canada's sustainability chief explains why—and humorously offers free earplugs on Facebook to anyone whose delicate eardrums can't take the abuse. It's a nice, tongue-in-cheek way to deal with the problem—and something they could have tried in the U.S. Yes, environmental appeals might be an easier sell in Canada, but Americans surely would have respected the company for not backtracking so quickly on a noble idea in the face of a minor consumer annoyance. One thing's for sure. The Canadian wing of the "Sorry But I Can't Hear You Over This SunChips Bag" group on Facebook is going to be pissed. Via Consumerist.

Click to read more ...

Filed under Canada, Environment, Frito-Lay, Nudd, Packaging, SunChips
Permalink | Comments (5)

PSA: Don't be ridiculous, turn off the lights!

Using an entire box of disposable razors when shaving, discarding each one after a single stroke. Wrapping a small sandwich in yards of tin foil. Keeping every tap in the house running at all times. Taking a bite of an apple, tossing what's left on the ground and moving on to another one. Those scenarios are portrayed as "ridiculous" examples of wasteful behavior in this BC Hydro Powersmart PSA from DDB Vancouver. It closes with a shot of a blazing light fixture in a house where the owners have gone out. The voiceover says: "The most ridiculous thing about wasting power is that for some reason, we don't think it's ridiculous." Actually, I don't think it's ridiculous. I like leaving all the lights on. That way, when I come home, I can clearly see the fruit and razors I've scattered all over the floor and not trip and break my neck.

Filed under Canada, DDB, Energy, Environment, Gianatasio
Permalink | Comments (5)

Greenpeace's milk ads do not go down easy

Apes and monkeys are all over adland these days. And not just in the planning department. (Hi-yo!) Here, Greenpeace in New Zealand blasts dairy company Fonterra for practices that contribute to the destruction of orangutans' rainforest homes. The spot has a creepy build-up. You know something bad's gonna happen. But it's ultimately more unsettling and icky than out-and-out horrific. Pfizer's got the gross-stuff-caught-in-your-throat market cornered, after all. Anyway, now we've got a beverage to wash down those Greenpeace orangutan-finger bars! Via Osocio.

Filed under Animals, Environment, Food and drink, Gianatasio, Greenpeace, New Zealand
Permalink | Comments (0)

Cut your carbon emissions, or get blown up

The 10:10 campaign—aimed at getting individuals to cut their carbon emissions by 10 percent a year, starting in 2010—takes a page from Citizen Change's playbook for this new video. Unfortunately, that page came from the chapter on ruining good causes with hyperbole and silly violence. The idea is: Anyone who doesn't want to cut their carbon emissions gets blown up. If the concept smells a bit like British absurdism to you, that's because it was written by Richard Curtis, who also wrote for Blackadder and Mr. Bean. 10:10's original response to the inevitable backlash was pretty callous. (They said, "We 'killed' five people to make 'No Pressure'—a mere blip compared to the 300,000 real people who now die each year from climate change.") But their subsequent response to sponsors and partners pulling away almost redeems them, at least to me. "At 10:10 we're all about trying new and creative ways of getting people to take action on climate change," they said in a statement. "Unfortunately in this instance we missed the mark. Oh well, we live and learn." Still awfully flippant, but they spared us a lot of phony agonizing and acknowledged that the idea was flawed. Best we could hope for, really. Keep watching to the end for a Gillian Anderson cameo. Via Jalopnik.

Filed under Controversy, Environment, Europe, Kiefaber
Permalink | Comments (1)

SunChips muffles noisy, biodegradable bag

Eighteen months after releasing a new biodegradable bag with much fanfare and a large ad buy, SunChips is mostly going back to the old bag until a less crinkly biodegradable alternative can be found. SunChips sales have dropped by 11 percent in the past 52 weeks—possibly in part due to the new bag, which people have said is just too damn loud, like lawnmower and jet-engine loud. There's even a Facebook group called "Sorry But I Can't Hear You Over This Sun Chips Bag," which has managed to attract almost 50,000 dissidents. Frito-Lay says it's committed to environmental packaging and will leave the original flavor in the new bag, but all other flavors are headed back to the old packaging. The company says it knew the bag sounded and felt different, but someone must have argued that people would care more about the environmental benefits than about a little noise. So, sorry environment. We were hoping for change that didn't actually require us to change.

Filed under Cullers, Environment, Packaging, SunChips
Permalink | Comments (6)

Rush Limbaugh scared of Nissan polar bear

You'd think Rush Limbaugh would have his hands full with political hot potatoes this election season. However, the talk-show host took a detour in topics earlier this week to play ad critic. Rush takes umbrage with the new "Polar Bear" ad (below) for the Nissan Leaf, done by TBWA\Chiat\Day, claiming its "pathetic" propaganda is designed to further the climate-change "hoax." The ad in question opens with melting glaciers and a polar bear floating around on a tiny ice floe before he's forced to roam a large city, where he eventually gives a surprise bear hug to a man getting in a Nissan Leaf electric car. It's all balderdash, according to Limbaugh. "The whole thing is a fraud," he declared. No matter where you stand on this kind of issue, Rush concludes with practical advice we can all agree on: "My friends, don't ever try to hug a polar bear. You will die. A polar bear will rip your head off. If a polar bear shows up in your driveway, run for the hills—or don't leave your house. Do not go out there and let it hug you."

Filed under Automotive, Environment, Morrissey, Nissan, Politics, TBWA
Permalink | Comments (1)

Polar bear uncommonly huggy in Nissan ad

This "Polar Bear" spot by TBWA\Chiat\Day for the all-electric Nissan Leaf is emblematic of the automaker's efforts to shake up its brand. It's more lighthearted than previous ads, features a voiceover by Robert Downey Jr., and focuses on the human impact of the company's innovations. Or, in this case, the ursine impact. Good thing that bear wasn't hungry, or that hug wouldn't have ended quite as happily. We're still waiting for the directors' cut, where the hug is interrupted by a splattery rain of polar bears shipped over from Mother's PlaneStupid.com PSA.

Filed under Animals, Automotive, Environment, Kiefaber, Nissan, TBWA
Permalink | Comments (6)

Hong Kong advertises canisters of fresh air

The air quality in Hong Kong is so bad that they're starting to sell fresh air in canisters, which you can strap to your face to enjoy lovely, brief periods of unpolluted respiration. Available in pleasant scents like vanilla, the beach and "horses," the canned air is "the revolutionary new product that lets you experience breathing like the rest of the world does," according to the spot below. Of course, it's a parody infomercial, nicely produced by DDB and the Hong Kong Clean Air Network (CAN), urging environmental protection. Says the line at the end: "If we do nothing about Hong Kong's air pollution today, we can look forward to this tomorrow." Via Time magazine's NewsFeed.

Filed under Asia, DDB, Environment, Infomercials, Parody, PSAs
Permalink | Comments (3)

Greenpeace fights deforestation of any kind

This odd, NSFW Greenpeace campaign from the Netherlands is all about keeping things natural, whether it's the world's forests or, apparently, your own personal underbrush. The message is a bit muddled, though, as the shock visuals at the end might cause some viewers to take up the cause of clear-cutting rather than oppose it. See the male version after the jump. Osocio has more on the campaign, including a QR-code element.

Click to read more ...

Filed under Environment, Greenpeace, Nudd
Permalink | Comments (3)

BP's angriest critics open fire with F-bombs

The environmental movement UnF—k The Gulf is only putting into words (well, one specific word) how most of us have felt about the BP oil spill, and their edginess is balanced out by cool ideas like letting donors vote on which charities get their money. So of course, the group is getting death threats from gomers who think actual violence is less objectionable than rude language. Honestly, I can't think of a better word to express the scale of what happened in the Gulf, and if these guys can channel some of that rage into donations, more power to them. They're hardly the most explicit non-profit out there, in any case.

Oil Spill Charity "F-Bomb-A-Thon" from UnF--kTheGulf.com on Vimeo.

Filed under BP, Environment, Kiefaber
Permalink | Comments (5)

Star-studded PSA seeks aid for Gulf region

The celebrities have come out of the woodwork for this Restore the Gulf PSA, aimed at helping the region recover in the wake of the devastating oil spill. We get Sandra Bullock, Blake Lively, several Mannings, Wendell Pierce and John Goodman (both of whom star in Treme, set in New Orleans), a very hairy Harry Shearer and a load of other stars. The spot directs viewers to restorethegulf.com, where you are asked to sign a petition "demanding a plan, fully funded and implemented, for the restoration of the Gulf of Mexico, its coastlines and its wetlands."

Filed under Celebrity endorsements, Environment, Nudd, PSAs
Permalink | Comments (2)

Denver Water pastes ads over old billboards

Sukle Advertising & Design is back with some more billboards in its long-running, much-lauded Denver Water campaign. The old ones were pretty eye-catching, with only small sections of the billboards being used, with the rest being an empty frame, along with the message, "Use only what you need." For the new effort, Sukle placed thin vinyl snipes over existing billboard ads to emphasize conservation and the idea that "Waste is out." See two more executions here. (The agency got approval from the previous advertisers, including Anthony's Pizza, Fairmount Cemetery, Qdoba and Steamboat Ski Resort, before pasting over their messages.) Sukle says the snipes use only 8 percent of the vinyl that a newly printed board would [DASH] though of course the average person on the street won't know that (it looks like about half), which makes the campaign a bit more confusing than the earlier stuff, whose effect was instantaneous.

Filed under Denver Water, Environment, Nudd, Sukle
Permalink | Comments (2)

Greenpeace ad harshes our World Cup buzz

It's bad enough that Greenpeace is a pine needle in the ass and fishhook in the eye of hard-working loggers and whalers worldwide. (Loggers and whalers breaking the law? As if!) Now, the environmental group is exploiting the World Cup with the Australian spot below, which claims, "Every two seconds an area of forest the size of a football pitch is being cut down." What's their point? No endangered species inhabits a football pitch, unless you count the U.S. national team. The graphic in the spot shows green match-head trees covering a soccer field. They're set ablaze, and flames engulf the goal. Of course, that's how the American squad felt when that goal was disallowed on Friday. Greenpeace should mount a mission and protest that ref's crazy call.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Filed under Australia, Environment, Gianatasio, Greenpeace, PSAs, Soccer, World Cup
Permalink | Comments (2)

Alex Bogusky deconstructs climate change

Alex Bogusky, the Crispin Porter + Bogusky creative chief who is now chief creative insurgent at MDC Partners, is pretty passionate about cleaning up the environment. He's already spearheaded CP+B's involvement in B-Cycle, an urban bike-sharing system. Now, he's put his creative and acting talents to use in the clip below, submitted to Design 21's Living Climate Change video contest, aimed at showing how global warming will affect our lives in 20 or 30 years. Bogusky wants to cut through the scientific mumbo-jumbo of the climate debate and get down to a simple truth—that pollution is bad, and clean is good. The idea is to treat pollution the same we do littering: as something to be stopped. It's a nice message, although it will surely rankle those who think the Crispin folks are a little too big for their britches. After all, the shop is already crowdsourcing ideas from creatives on cleaning up the BP oil spill.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

Filed under Alex Bogusky, Crispin Porter, Environment, Morrissey
Permalink | Comments (7)

Space chimp finds Earth wasted in WWF ad

In this rather unexpected environmental message from Leo Burnett for the World Wildlife Fund, a space-faring chimp returns to Mother Earth after 65 years to discover a 21st-century "wasteland" and shed a tear that would break the heart of Iron Eyes Cody. While it seems like an inspired twist on Planet of the Apes ("You maniacs! God damn you all to hell!"), it's actually a reference to the chimps we launched into space in the '60s. The video is a collaboration with Ben Lee, whose "Song for the Divine Mother of the Universe" provides the soundtrack. Check the behind-the-scenes vid here. The creative team tells Taxi that they wanted to redefine the "impersonal and scientific" issue of environmental stewardship "in a way that struck an emotional chord." I dunno what planet they've been orbiting, but last I checked, it was pretty emotional already.

—Posted by Rebecca Cullers

Filed under Animals, Cullers, Environment, Leo Burnett, World Wildlife Fund
Permalink | Comments (9)

'Beyond petroleum' not looking so slick now

BP's "Beyond petroleum" campaign, launched by Ogilvy & Mather almost a decade ago, has always been borderline ludicrous, positioning the oil company as essentially anti-oil (or at least post-oil). Critics have long characterized the ads as the height of hypocrisy and greenwashing (given BP's relatively small investment in alternate energies compared to its core business, and its pursuit of environmentally controversial projects like its oil sands work in Canada). Now, its purportedly green image has been dirtied once again with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, caused by a sunken rig it was operating. Anger toward the company has been muted so far, with only isolated calls for a boycott, but that may change when the spill reaches the coast. For BP's sake, hopefully there aren't too many overly dramatic, attention-seeking otters around.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under BP, Energy, Environment, Nudd, Ogilvy
Permalink | Comments (5)

Save water by showering together, says Axe

Today is Earth Day, and Axe Canada and ad agency Zig are sexing up the proceedings (it's about time!) by recommending that you share your shower with significant others (and insignificant others!) to conserve water. I've been suggesting this at the office via e-mails and break-room flyers, but no one ever replies. "Take action, take your clothes off," the ad instructs. I probably shouldn't have complied with that request in my cubicle, but it was a slow morning and my Dockers make my knees itch. Look, I'm all for "showerpooling," but I can't even get into the shower these days with all the plastic water bottles piled up to my ceiling. I've got some issues to work through. First of all, I've got to find my pants.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Filed under Axe, Canada, Earth Day, Environment, Gianatasio, Zig
Permalink | Comments (1)

Brita ad takes aim at plastic-bottle hoarders

I can't wait until Earth Day is over, so we won't be bombarded with sappy "environmental messages" like this Brita ad by DDB Canada. So what if some folks like to fill every nook and cranny of their living spaces with plastic water bottles? Isn't that what nooks and crannies are for? Leave these bottle hoarders alone. They need therapy, but at least they're not littering the countryside. In fact, the whole spot—particularly the pool overflowing with plastic refuse—has a pleasingly pop-art sensibility. They should compost that treacly soundtrack, though—it's crap.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Filed under Canada, DDB, Environment, Gianatasio
Permalink | Comments (1)

Stop urinating on the planet, Canadians told

Idle Free Calgary makes a strong bid for ickiest ad of the year with "Unacceptable" via JOE Media Group. The spot surely sets a record for most instances of public urination in a commercial. If any other ad shows more, I don't want to know about it. A voiceover explains, "When we idle our vehicles, we're basically saying, 'Piss on the planet.' " That analogy seems like a wee bit of a stretch. Maybe if these folks had kept their engines running, they could've driven to a bathroom in time. Note to self: Cancel vacation in Canada.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Filed under Canada, Environment, Gianatasio
Permalink | Comments (2)

Flick of a switch controls this Earth Hour ad

The World Wildlife Fund teamed up with Hot Chip to create this cool online ad for Earth Hour. It's actually two videos in one—a "light" version and a "dark" version. The one that plays for you depends on the amount of light your webcam is picking up. (Your room needs to be very dark to play the dark version, so hold your hand over the webcam if you have to.) If you're still rocking a webcam-less computer from 2003, you can check out an alternate version over on YouTube, where you toggle between light and dark using a light switch in the upper right. (The webcam version is a lot more seamless, though, as the characters' steps match up.) I'm a huge fan of stop motion as well as non-traditional uses of online video. And by registering to turn off your lights during Earth Hour this Saturday, you get a warm and fuzzy feeling of saving the world—from a Doom Laser! It just reminds you how everything goes right when you turn off the lights.

—Posted by Christine Hall

Filed under Earth Hour, Environment, Hall, Hot Chip, WWF
Permalink | Comments (3)

Nestlé gets feisty on Facebook over palm oil

Nestlé has been in full damage-control mode ever since Greenpeace likened Kit Kats to bloody orangutan fingers. The international chocolatier has posted no fewer than nine Facebook updates defending its use of palm oil, which Greenpeace says is destroying rainforest habitats. However, the company's outreach doesn't seem to be winning over the critics. User comments on the official Nestlé Facebook page have been overwhelmingly negative, with administrators twice asking fans to quit using "an altered version of any of our logos." The brand's representatives have also lost their patience a few times, snapping back with comments such as this one, which simply must be read in its entirety: "So, let's see, we have to be well-mannered all the time but it's perfectly acceptable to refer to us as everything from idiots right the way down to sons of satan with a few obscenities and strange sexual practices thrown in?" I earnestly feel for Nestlé, which has been battered relentlessly in social media for its international policies, but sometimes the best thing to do is just disengage, go get your house in order and come back when heads are a little cooler. Hat tip to @AdLawGuy.

—Posted by David Griner

Filed under Controversy, Environment, Greenpeace, Griner, Nestlé
Permalink | Comments (21)

U.K. nixes climate-change ads over wording

The U.K. advertising watchdog has ordered that a pair of government print ads warning of climate change be pulled for suggesting that horrible devastation is on the way, when in fact horrible devastation is only probably on the way. Change "will become" to "will likely become" in the copy above, and they'd have been fine. (See the other ad, a "Rub a Dub Dub" parody, here.) The bedtime-story TV spot below, which we wrote about earlier, was deemed perfectly OK, even with the drowning doggie.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under Controversy, Environment, Europe, Nudd
Permalink | Comments (0)

Break me off a piece of that orangutan hand

Orangutan fingers make for a great mid-afternoon snack. Crunchy on the outside, gooey and bloody in the middle. This little shock PSA is from Greenpeace, which is trying to pressure Nestlé to stop buying cheap palm oil (a key ingredient of Kit-Kat bars) from companies that destroy the rainforests. Whatever you think of this kind of advertising, it does work on one basic level—it suppresses your appetite. Via Osocio.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under Environment, Greenpeace, Kit Kat, Nestlé, Nudd
Permalink | Comments (0)

Anti-plastics PSAs maybe a bit too beautiful

Borders Perrin Norrander in Oregon has put together some animated clips for the Surfrider Foundation, the environmental group devoted to protecting the world's oceans, waves, and beaches. In the spot below, a whale struggles through a sea of refuse, eventually morphing into a beached plastic-coated monstrosity. It's a gorgeous and intriguing spot ... and that's the problem. The polluted deep-sea environment becomes a stylized pop-art wonderland: It's darkly alluring rather than frightening, watering down the message a bit: "Plastics kills 1.5 million marine animals each year." A second spot, posted after the jump, shows a bird building its home out of detritus like soft-drink lids and deflated balloons. But again, the image isn't one of nature befouled. Rather, our feathered friend winds up with the hippest tricked-out nest in the tree.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Click to read more ...

Filed under Borders Perrin Norrander, Environment, Gianatasio, Surfrider Foundation
Permalink | Comments (1)