Animal suicide: new global warming ad

Picked up this from a US-based social media and PR class blog.

This was unsettling to watch, for a few reasons. One, it is well made, put together by a Portuguese environmental organization named Quercus. The PSA was created by McCann Erickson Portugal.
The tag line at the end of the video reads “Global Warming - If [...]

Green & Local 4: global stories, green pounds

Just some links this morning on different ‘green and local’ issues in the press (and to celebrate UN World Population Day).
The Knight Science Tracker does a crawl of environmental reporting, and reporting on environment each day, and last night picked up on this serendipity of similar reporting across continents:

In the Times of India, the story [...]

More on ads: the Exxon ‘flip-flop’

I’m writing this blog as it’s announced that Exxon’s damages for the Valdez oil spill, in 1989, have finally been agreed. Nineteen years after.  The oil company are also infamous for allegedly providing US$23m to undermine the science of climate change, and offering scientists and economists $10,000 each to undermine the findings of the latest [...]

Lexus advertises its climate credo

Lots of ink on car advertising this morning, as The Guardian report Fiat are criticized by the Advertising Standards Authority for “boasting” about claims on low CO2 emissions. FIat were found to have breached “the CAP code on grounds of truthfulness, prices, comparisons, motoring and qualification of environmental claims.” That’s a lot of breaching.
Now then, [...]

UK government rules on car advertising

Good news, sung quietly. Following up on a story from last week, where car manufacturers and advertising executives went to Brussels to protest against plans to make emissions information mandatory on all car ads, the news is: they failed.
At least in the UK. What this means is that this:

Changes to this:

The word du jour, as [...]

U.S.: Mixed messages = mixed-up audience

Some notes from the US. Lots of coverage on John McCain’s two faces today: 1) the climate change campaigner in his new 30-second TV ad ‘Global’, and 2) the five-gallon hat friend, talking to Big Oil in Texas about his plans to lift restrictions on drilling for oil and gas.
The ad goes out in New [...]

Media’s blind eye to advertising

Yesterday I wrote about protests by publishers and car manufacturers against plans by the EU to introduce compulsory rules governing pollution info on car advertising. In last night’s 7pm Channel Four flagship news programme, the producers covered the story (good) but relegated it to the ‘And Finally…’ slot (bad) generally reserved for the more lighthearted [...]

Ad agencies say adverts don’t work: believe them?

What do you think of this advert?*
Now, does it conform to what you would consider responsible advertising? Does it (thanks Leo Hickman) meet Advertising Standards Authority’s code of practice section 2.2. “All marketing communications should be prepared with a sense of responsibility to consumers and to society.” Well, yes, unfortunately it probably does, unless you’re [...]

Artemis ads hunting me down

That’s Artemis Investment Management, not the Greek goddess of of the hunt.
I’m thinking through the choice of cultural objects as case studies for my PhD that explores how we represent, talk about and communicate the environment. I’ll be looking at media, long form journalism, literature, poetry, and now, I think, a key contender has to [...]

The cultural economy of the luxury brand

Yesterday I looked at the copy content in the launch of Standpoint, the new politics/business monthly magazine edited by former Telegraph associate editor Daniel Johnson, with launch articles from a number of neocon names and Telegraph writers that did nothing to support Johnson’s claim that it is a magazine of both the Left and Right.
The [...]