Ah, I have a whole green advertising campaign in my head based on the
slogan "because you're not worth it". (actually it started ages ago
with a heap of sweet dead red eyed bunny rabbits)
Harriet
On 16 October 2010 10:42, Brian Orr <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Tom,
> "How are we going to get them to even notice us?"
> As fundamental question as one could pose re: the challenge of climate
> change.
> Who are the 'we' and the 'them'?
> If it was the CEO and his advertising advisers and their consumers the
> question would
> be one they address every week. Answer: shout more loudly or subtlety or
> both. And
> the basic technique would be either tapping into the fundamentals of the
> human psyche -
> status, sex, mother-love, gratification, fear. And in the process build up a
> raft of values that
> aid the selling of the product. "Because you're worth it!"
> Unfortunately the only one we can clearly play on is 'fear'. And that can
> clearly become a turn-off.
> But we do have a form of 'gratification' to sell, even though it's clearly
> going to be up-hill all the way.
> It's the form of gratification we call 'altruism'. I'm inclined to think it
> should be placed above 'fear'
> in our limited armoury.
> Brian Orr
> On 15 Oct 2010, at 21:05, Barker, Tom wrote:
>
> If someone looks at it, George, all will not have been lost.
>
> Your point is valid but we must also ask, "Who is going to notice the deep
> green family living within their allotted carbon footprint, growing their
> own and not engaging with the urban bulk of society?"
>
> I like the idea of everybody being sustainable and reducing their impact to
> zero net emissions, and I don't have a car or fly for that very reason, but
> i would not begrudge Ban Ki-Moon, Rajendra Pachauri or James Hansen flying
> if they are trying to convince the greater numbers to move towards
> sustainability. The whole world it seems is playing sport with their
> computer, lovingly stroking their i-Phone and living it up in cities. How
> are we going to get them to even notice us?
>
> Tom
> ________________________________
> From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum [[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of George Marshall [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 15 October 2010 19:16
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: MOTHS, GREENS AND CORPORATE NEON
>
> http://climatedenial.org/2010/10/15/up-in-lights/
>
> UP IN LIGHTS
>
> George Marshall @ 6:49 pm Edit This
> When campaign organisations put their climate change messages up in lights
> alongside commercial neon advertising the result is a bizarre dissonance
> that does nothing for their message but says a lot more about our collective
> confusion and denial.
> Last week 10:10, the global campaign to reduce emissions by 10% this year,
> proudly announced that its name was up among the bright lights in Piccadilly
> Circus. The tweet promoting the sign said “in amongst it all, you really can
> see the glimmers of a movement building”.
> Piccadilly Lights from Londonlime on Vimeo.
> Glimmers indeed. Watch carefully or you may miss it- yes 10:10 really is
> there, alternating with a gambling website and engulfed by the vastly
> greater signs of TDK, Sanyo and Sony.
> Piccadilly Circus is not just a fancy illuminated sign, it is, and has
> always been, a totem pole of corporate advertising. To place a climate
> change message there implies that there is no conflict of interest between
> action on climate change and the growth economics of globalised
> corporations. Even if you accept this – and personally I don’t – is it not
> bizarre nonetheless to publicise a climate change campaign that has urged
> people to turn their televisions off standby and unplug their mobile phone
> charger on a flashing sign alongside the world’s largest electronics
> corporations? It would be like the National Cycle Network putting its logo
> on the side of Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari.
> Much as I respect what 10:10 has achieved, I have come to expect their
> communications to be, shall we say, eccentric. 2 weeks ago they
> enthusiastically launched a promo movie that showed dissenters being blown
> apart with high explosive. See my last post.. But I do expect more coherence
> from the World Wide Fund for Nature and its large and experienced
> communications team. However the WWF is just as excited by the thought of
> being up in lights. In March this year it persuaded its partners Coca Cola
> to give over its prime Piccadilly Circus spot for an advert for its Earth
> Hour – a global call for people to turn out their lights in solidarity with
> the climate crisis.
> Hold it there for a moment – an environmental organisation, teamed up with a
> global soft drinks manufacturer (reknowned for its dubious expansion tactics
> and links with obesity), takes out a huge illuminated sign to encourage
> people to save energy and turn off their lights.
>
> WWF’s justification was that the sign would go out at 8.30 pm as part of the
> Earth Hour. If you turn a blind eye to the extremely mixed messaging you can
> also conveniently ignore the fact that it did not actually go off at all,
> but went a kind of bright grey colour like a laptop screen on the
> blink.Link…
> It seems that environmentalists, like moths, are so dazzled by the bright
> lights that they lose all sense of where they are and what they are trying
> to say. And if Piccadilly Circus, a rather mediocre display, is so
> attractive to campaigners, Times Square drives us nuts.
> In 2008 the Climate Group chose the middle of Times Square for the launch of
> its Together campaign- once again, a programme aimed at persuading people to
> adopt small changes in energy saving behaviour. The launch was a strange
> affair of celebrities, laptop information screens and potted plants- and
> above them all a huge LED sign with a pulsing orange circle logo. Link, go
> to June 2008 tab and click on ‘launch video’
> Earth Day 2009 was launched when an illuminated ‘Earth Ball’ (sponsored by
> Philips Electrics) was dropped in Times Square. They came back for their
> 40th anniversary this year with“personal greetings from renowned leaders of
> the environmental movement” aired on screens around the square.
> And even the admirable and usually right-on-message Bill McKibben, the
> founder of the grassroots 350.org movement, chose to launch the 2009 Climate
> Day of Action there under their huge illuminated arrow logo. Could anyone
> actually guess what the Blue Arrow or the Earth Ball or the Yellow Circle
> were advertising? Mobile phones? Soft drinks? Trainers? They all seem to
> mulch down to pretty much the same in the bold coloured big graphiced sans
> serif logo world.
> It is not hard to see why environmental groups are so excited about having
> their name in lights. They clearly love the idea of being a player among the
> other global brands and having a foothold in an iconic and exciting
> location. Green groups are painfully aware of their stereotype as judgmental
> backward looking puritans, so they willingly embrace any image that portrays
> them as cool, exciting, forward looking and part of the modern consumer
> world. And, to be fair, when we are all trying so damned hard to get people
> engaged, can we really blame anyone who sees a chance to get some attention?
> But my concern is not so much about the medium as the way that the adjacency
> of messages urging activist action and consumerist inaction contributes to
> our collective denial. Such jarring juxtapositions are now so common that we
> take them for granted. A dire scientific report on the impacts of flying
> will appear in a newspaper adjacent to a full page advert for cheap flights,
> or a website will have a banner for a competition to win a tropical holiday
> above a climate change report on the burning of the Amazon.
> People would immediately observe, and probably protest, such associations
> around other topics where they already have a strong moral compass. Just
> imagine the complaints if fast food companies ran adverts in the middle of a
> documentary on childhood obesity. And on very sensitive topics people notice
> even minor and accidental associations. I recall a complaint against a
> Polaroid advert during a commercial break in the 1980’s mini-series
> Holocaust –it appeared, entirely by coincidence, just after SS officers have
> been flicking through photos of concentration camps.
> Advertisers (and the advertising departments in the media) usually invest a
> lot of attention to make sure that adverts are put alongside copy and
> visuals that do not challenge their brand and put it in the most flattering
> context. In the case of climate change they clearly see no contradictions.
> If they think about it at all, and I doubt that they do, they probably
> reckon that the appeal of their product can overcome any adjacent warning
> about climate change. I suspect that they are right and that the climate
> message is subtly and subconsciously weakened in the mind of the viewer as a
> result (a postulate that I freely offer for a tasty social science research
> topic).
> But surely, one would think, environmental campaigners would be alert to
> such conflicts and would actively avoid any contamination of their message.
> Most green groups have policies against taking funding from oil and aviation
> companies for exactly this reason. Some of the largest mainstream green
> groups work with corporations that contribute to climate change but usually
> do so under carefully controlled conditions where the partnership is well
> defined and the corporation is not allowed free reign to promote itself.
> But all that falls apart in the glorious hypnotic world of flashing NEON.
> Really, for me, the test is this: when someone looks at this footage in
> 2100, amidst the chaos of a dangerously overheated world, what will he or
> she make of it ? Will it seem like a valiant attempt to engage people? Or
> will it seem disturbing and incoherent?
>
>
>
> ANY COMMENTS PLEASE POST ON www.CLIMATEDENIAL.ORG
>
>
>
> George Marshall,
> Director of Projects,
> Climate Outreach Information Network
> [log in to unmask]
>
> Direct Telephone (Wales) 01686 411 080
> Mobile 0781 724 1889
> Skype: climategeorge
>
>
>
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>
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