It Grows On Trees

New Green Drinks Poster

Astronaut's latest poster for Sioux Falls Green Drinks, with art by Garth Heckel and our own Eric Bodamer.

Come down to Buffaloberries Select Ingredient Bar at 309 S Phillips Ave. in downtown Sioux Falls at 5 pm, this Wednesday, Sept. 23 for suds with friends and little chit chat about sustainability.

Check out Garth's fun little t-shirt design business in Denver: Ape Snort.

Social Media's Echo Chamber Chamber Chamber

This has been on my mind for a few weeks now — the expertise one quickly develops through an assiduous regimen of navel gazing. 

via Jeff Nelson.

Dirtied Animals

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.

Audi: "Clean Diesel" Mops Up on Foreign Oil

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."

Eco Zoo: Where the Animals Feed You

They feed your imagination, anyway. I'm not even going to comment, except to say Eco Zoo, produced by Tokyo interactive shop Enjin, is one hell of a "petting zoo:" a massive hands-on experience that breaks more than one mold. Enjoy.

Sioux Falls Green Drinks is GO!

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.

Astronaut Snags "Best of Show" with Work for Poet

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?

Coen too Far on Latest Reality Anti-Coal Ad?

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.