Headline: "The tsunami killed 100 times more people than 9/11. The planet is brutally powerful. Respect it. Preserve it."
According to Adfreak, WWF has said the ad was "never authorized or approved by any WWF person on the planet", DDB has apologized (in Portuguese), and the creative team has been terminated.
We all make bad creative judgements once in a while, especially with the need to stand out among media overload, but these missteps are usually corrected in the boardroom (or at last resort) by someone on the client end.
This ad, however, was submitted to the One Show — and even won an "award of merit". (Don't look for it now, though. It's gone.)
So the the work of a creative team in one corner of the world ends up making the whole industry look bad, just because they thought their concept was too good to go into exile in the spec portfolio. Thanks, guys. Just when we were starting to be hated a little less than lawyers.
