G20 climate change ads rejected by Australian airport #onmyagenda

A billboard that was supposed to greet G20 leaders as they arrived for their next meeting in Brisbane, Australia, has been rejected by the airport authority.

The Guardian reports that the ad, featuring a farmer whose vineyard was destroyed by extreme high temperatures, was turned down because climate change was deemed "too political" for posting inside the airport.

A related article notes that the Australian government was reluctant to but climate change on the G20 meeting agenda, but reluctantly did so only after pressure from the United States and the European Union.

The rejection is a bit of a scandal, too, as it was revealed that two directors on the board of Brisbane Airport Corporation have interests in fossil fuel companies. (The BAC says they had no influence on the decision.)

Australia has been particularly hard hit by rising global temperatures, but Australian PM Tony Abbott has been accused of being a climate change skeptic. So perhaps this issue is "political" insofar as politicians are making it so.

Another billboard will be erected on the road to the G20 meeting. It features firefighter Dean McNulty against a backdrop of damage representative of the increasingly common bush fires in drought-ravaged areas of Australia.

The #onmyagenda campaign is a partnership between Oxfam, Greenpeace, 350.0rg, WWF, Earth Hour, GetUp, the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Australian Youth Climate Coalition and 1 Million Women.

Climate pseudoscience is OK for Calgary billboards, anti-oil ads not so much

Via Huffpo

You've probably seen this message, either outdoors, online, or in print. It's a clever line used by Greenpeace to promote solar energy over oil.

Their latest media plan had it going up two years ago in Calgary, close to the Alberta legislature, in the wake of the Plains Midstream Canada oil spills. (The company was just fined $1.3 million after pleading guilty in two pipeline spills that sent almost five million litres of oil into Alberta rivers.)

Greenpeace said it arranged with Pattison Outdoor on June 13, 2012, to place the billboard for a month at a cost of $2,800. Two days later, Greenpeace was told the artwork had not been approved. They were not given an explanation.

Fast forward to 2014, and here is the kind of billboard that is running in Calgary:

Via Huffpo

"Friends of Science" is an ironically named Canadian organization that denies any human involvement in climate change.

According to NASA, 97% of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities.

"Friends" is funded anonymously through an intermediary, the Calgary Foundation, although it is accused of being an organ of the petrochemical industry.

Pattison will not comment why the Greenpeace ad was unacceptable to their advertising standards, and the FoS one was, leaving us to form our own conclusions about who is calling the shots in Calgary outdoor media.

Thanks to Kerry for the tip!

Canadian Tire incorporates global warming into its marketing plan

So, this is interesting.

Canadian Tire sent me this promotional e-mail for their "Pre-winter Advantage Program," which encourages customers to buy their snow tires as early as possible.

I guess the trend towards shorter and milder winters is perceived as a threat to tire sales. So interestingly, they're offering a full rebate to earlybird customers if the temperature on the first day of winter (December 21) is 10 degrees celsius (50 Fahrenheit) or above.

In other words, the famed Canadian brand is asking me to bet on a green Christmas season. I'm not sure that's such a great idea, considering that this winter is supposed to be an icy throwback. But I suppose at least I'd beat the rush for installation.

I guess I want America to fail #FdAdFriday

I have no other comment.

(Thanks to Kerry and Casey for sharing)

Climate Change Marketing

You may or may not be aware of Greenpeace's "tck tck tck" international campaign aimed to shame world leaders at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, but if you work in downtown Ottawa you've seen the Harper version.

Here's a close-up:



(Strangely, unlike the other leaders, he doesn't seem to have aged a day.)



I loved this campaign's basic concept of looking back from the future with regret. I think that the anticipation of regret is a great emotional trigger.

If there's anything about this campaign that bugs me a little, it's the simplification of the issue. But that's a challenge with any cause marketing campaign. Scientific and social issues like climate change are complex ones that require a lot of mental work to even try to understand beyond the black-and-white thinking that activists and deniers alike exhibit when trying to rally supporters.

But imagine this ad with the headline:

"I'm sorry. We could have tried to agree to make painful efforts to reduce human-influenced greenhouse gas emissions that are affecting natural cycles of global climate change in measurable (yet ultimately unpredictable) ways, but I had to admit to myself that politics simply don't work like that — especially in this economy — and China won't have any of it anyway."

Of course it doesn't work. tl;dnr. Plus, the climate change deniers must love seeing these outdoor ads surrounded by the leavings of the season's first blizzard. (A completely irrelevant but unfortunate anecdotal position that enters every climate change argument.)

Trying to address complex issues in a way that people can understand is actually very hard. Especially in advertising, which is often described as "though-provoking" but which usually aims at the gut. I have heard and communicated many perspectives on climate change through my corporate responsibility and social marketing work with clients as diverse as Environment Canada, Canadian Urban Transit Association, AECL, CAA and the Canadian Petroleum Products Institute. As I recently said to an ad student, "Everyone wants a better world. The eternal problem is getting them to agree on what that is, and how to get there."

Will this campaign shame the leaders into action? Probably not. But it got Greenpeace some new exposure and got people talking, which is all that any client can really ask for.

Let's keep the conversation going.