The Daily Green blog has published a post featuring an impressive collection of environmental awareness advertisements from Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, International Fund for Animal Welfare, and others. The ads are full of memorable images, clever and creative concepts, and expensive graphic designs. I betcha most of these were produced by big name advertising agencies as pro-bono efforts.
Most of these ads are failures. In fact, I designed the environmental message method and Due Diligence Test Panel to help people like you avoid the kinds of mistakes you see on display here.
So let me be very blunt about where all these expensive advertising agencies missed the mark for their pro-bono clients:
It is a mistake to trying to wow or shock people into action, without telling them explicitly what that action is or encouraging them that it matters. It does not matter how cleverly or creatively you do it.
Of the 11 ads featured here, only this one below has an explicit call to action — switching out lightbulbs — and shows a picture of somebody doing that. It’s both clever and effective.
Other than that, most of these ads are just too clever for their own good.
That said, they are damn clever so take a minute to surf on over to Daily Green and take a look for yourself:
11 Powerful Environmental Messages
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I agree Eric, although I liked the Tarzan ad. Kind of a puny Tarzan, however. The WWE ad about nature not recycling is blatently false. Nature is, by nature, the greatest recycler. Too clever by half, or Wit/2 still tends to grate rather than motivate, in my humble opinion.
Why is it that advertising agencies forget everything they know about selling when they’re doing pro bono work? They would never try to shock people into buying Coke, except perhaps in a funny way. (“These are your tastebuds without Coke” maybe?) Walmart doesn’t show pictures of people unhappily shopping at Macy’s, it shows people getting great deals at Walmart. And yet so many social marketing campaigns show us only despair or what not to do.
If you are a client, ask the ad agency if they would use the same technique to sell a product. If the answer is no, ask for better. Yes, they’re doing it for free, but shouldn’t that mean they actually want to make a difference?
(Woah. Maybe that’s enough coffee for today.)
They are pretty creative and cool, though. I’ll give them that.
These are beautiful images, and many might be effective change agents depending on the context of their use which isn’t stated.
However, I use the criteria for effective messaging by asking if the ad/poster/whatever will change the behavior of someone who knows little of the issues involved and isn’t inclined to learn about them. Can a message reach these people and inspire them? Most of these ads would fail that criteria.
I love your comment Joan, about shocking people into buying Coca Cola. As an aspiring advertising planner I feel embarrassed looking at some of the work that is coming out of agencies regarding ‘environmental’ issues. Although their Ads are beautiful and their intentions are there, Greenpeace are the biggest culprits themselves when it comes to communicating a message that fails on credibility.
Even Coca Cola’s ‘ recent social media recycling campaign was at least realistic and credible and gave people the opportunity to take part and recycle themselves.
Shock advertising and fear appeals are sexy and telling people to clean their shit up after them isn’t. The only thing I truelly believe can change someones behavior (thus clean their shit up) is somebody else.