Zookeepers in Vienna, Austria actually cooperated with a pair of German artists in an installation called "Trouble in Paradise," meant to question whether the constructed environments of zoos are truly "natural." Shocking and unforgettable. An example of how great work combines familiar ideas in completely new ways. You have to give props to the zoo for its self-critique. So, no, it's technically not guerrilla art for gorillas....
Via PSFK.
What's most interesting in this online ad, part of a much larger, high-production-value campaign from Audi, is not the obvious heresy in positioning diesel, made cuter with an asterisk (and for which I give props to the creatives/planners who thought that up), as the friendlier fossil fuel, but the benefit it suggests: the chance to "send back" foreign oil.
Feels good, huh? It's empowering, even a little bourgois, to "send back" something you don't care for or approve, in this case, that distasteful foreign oil, rolled onto our shores in beat-up oil drums.
Never mind that we don't actually send oil back. Ever. Never mind that the car that eliminates the need for foreign oil is itself foreign made. Audi let's you feel like you just stuck it to the man, all while cozying up to that sweetly reformed petroleum product.
There's power and in this case chicness in villifying the abstracted "other" hiding in the idea, if not the fact, of foreign oil (fact: most oil we import comes from Canada). It's less a "green" message than a national security/economic message, but the crossover is here to stay. It's just crazy to see foreign automobile makers shilling it — along with the subject of my next post, the Audi "TDI Movement."
Spent the last month working with Joe Bartmann, a great new friend in the green cause out here on the prairie, to kick-off South Dakota's first-ever Green Drinks.
The hoedown is set for 4:30 pm this Friday, March 20 — the first day of spring — at Latitude 44.
It will be interesting to see how many eco-minions we can draw out, not only from business people, but city leaders, academics and regular folks interested in sustainable living. J
Joe works with the Sioux Falls Green Project and has a few excellent blogs you can track here.
Tell you friends and let's throw back a few. Hey, the planet depends on it!
More details here.
Mostly, we try to track the wider world of green communications, but we recently received a decent enough reason to brag on our own work. In this, our first year entering work in the South Dakota Advertising Federation awards show, Astronaut took Best of Show in "electronic media," one of only two categories so honored.
The work that beat out scores of worthy entries (many from the old-guard agencies in our area) is a program called "Landscapes" we developed and produced for Poet, the world's largest ethanol producer and one of our best clients.
Its primary objective was to generate excitement, interest and action from farmers in the region to join Poet's effort to produce cellulosic ethanol on a commercial scale. Its secondary objective was to demonstrate the company's leadership and give others who support renewable energy and biofuels a clear star to steer by in Project Liberty, Poet's cellulosic ethanol effort.
As with all agency work, this was a team effort. Landscapes is the result of one of those great moments of collaboration between our client, our shop and our production partner, VVI. So we want to share the love with them, big time. Best of all, our client/producer at Poet, Autumn Bates, reports the show did its job by generating real enthusiasm and buy-in from its farmer audience.
Props also to Insight Marketing Design, our friends who took Best of Show in the Addy's print category.
The awards garnered a little press here.
Oh yeah, Astronaut also earned one Best of Class award, three gold Addy's and four silver Addy's. Not bad for the new kid on the block, huh?
So this is another fun, in-your-face spot for Reality, Al Gore's anti-coal campaign. But part of the hype that is was written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen.
And I'm like, really? Why?
Hey this is great stuff, but did they really need the A-list brothers (unless because they'd write/direct pro bono, maybe)? Just wondering.
Whatever — it got me blogging, and the media buzzing, so I guess that's a win. It's still great creative and a killer strategy.
And since GE saw fit last night to run, along with this cool new spot, the ad that it earned an Emmy nomination all the way back in 2007, it may seem a little obvious at this point, but still worth stating:
Ecomagination IS the GE brand.
It is the only way GE is describing and differentiating itself. And that makes for a whole lot of examples for other companies, large or small, with any eco-forward initiative of any scale. Think about it.
It's a real measure of the times — considering that green advertising was essentially absent from last year's broadcast.
As a newly minted father-of-a-girl (I have three boys, too), this caught my attention.
Spend some time talking about "green" marketing or sustainability, and pretty soon you get into the LOHAS (lifestyles of sustainability and health) market and eventually social justice and, by extension, cause marketing. They definitely overlap.
As with my previous post, the Girl Effect campaign suggests the connection is both real and urgent: economic opportunity means social justice and thus, at least in theory, a healthier planet.
Although I love this site, by Grow Interactive of Norfolk, Virginia, the argument in the video seems glib: hey guess what, girls will save the world.
On the one hand, advertisers need to piece the force field we wrap around our brains, and this piece does it. On the other hand, there's something a little trite about the connect-the-dots solution it argues. But spend some time with the "fact book" on girls in developing countries, and you may find, as I have, a deeper appreciation of the place girls can and should have in parts of the world where they have the least opportunity.
Footnote: I find it interesting that the Nike Foundation is one of the program's sponsors — Nike has taken heat for many, many years over its labor practices in Third World countries. I'll let you decide whether this is window dressing for the company or if its help is meaningful. This much I'll say: the work is great and I thank God my daughter will have the opportunities awaiting her here in the states.
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