Stinky PSA campaign causes a real-life gas leak panic

Via NY Daily News

Here's a funny one.

According to the Great Falls Tribune, reports of a major natural gas leak in the Montana city's business section caused the evacuation of several buildings yesterday.

The cause? Scratch-n-sniff direct mailers designed to educate the public about what a gas leak smells like:

Nick Bohr, general manager at Energy West, said workers at the company were cleaning out some storage areas and discarded several boxes of scratch-and-sniff cards that it sent out to customers in the past to educate them on what natural gas smells like. 

“They were expired, and they were old,” Bohr said. “They threw them into the Dumpsters.” 

When the cards were picked up by sanitation trucks and crushed, “It was the same as if they had scratched them.”

Natural gas doesn't have a detectable odour of its own, but has a chemical (t-butyl mercaptan or thiophane) added to give it a foul "rotten egg" smell so that people can detect leaks.

Via Philly.com

Energy West had been distributing the PSA cards to customers as part of a safety awareness campaign.

“In a sense, it worked the way it was supposed to,” commented Nick Bohr, general manager at Energy West, as part of the company's apology for the inconvenience. They also mentioned that there was no public safety or environmental concern about putting the expired cards in the trash.

If you want stinky PSA stickers of your own, you can order them by the thousand here.

Tip via The Consumerist

Reframing the solar power pitch (sort-of)

"You just heard 'solar" and assumed I'm some weird pickler guy"

A new Fast Company post features this fun campaign by Heat for  SunRun, a San Francisco-based provider of domestic solar power systems.

This one's the best:



By making gentle fun of environmentalists, the approach does two things well:

1) It appeals to people who are more thrifty than "crunchy", and
2) It appeals to people who are a little crunchy, but have a healthy sense of irony

In other words, the ads appeal to smart people who want to live more sustainably — one way or another — and lower the barriers to trial.

It's a refreshing attempt to normalize solar.

Are coal-fired cars "the New Normal"?

Mitsubishi has decided to promote its own electric car with a stunt: Giving residents of Normal, Illinois 1,000 new electric cars and documenting their adoption by conservative Middle America.



Setting the stunt in "Normal" was really cute. But Illinois is hardly an ideal location for electric cars.

Why? One word: Coal.

Like much of the USA, Illinois gets much of its energy from coal. The state is a major coal producer, but their black gold is so dirty they end up exporting most of it. And their existing plants are pretty nasty, built before "clean coal" technology and regulations.

Is burning coal to power your car really cleaner than burning petroleum? How about nuclear? (Illinois is big into the atom as well.) This is why I am not as thrilled about the electric car as I used to be. To me, it seems as if they have the potential to allow city-dwellers to feel good about themselves and preserve their air while exporting their emissions and waste to the countryside. All energy has an environmental cost, and we need to look at the cause and effect throughout the system before we declare any technological miracles.

F'd Ad Fridays: "F" is for "Fart joke"

And this one goes on way too long.



The worst part is listening to it at your desk on speakers. Oh well, at least your coworkers won't be bothering you for the next 20 minutes or so.

Tip via Adland

Signs of change

What differentiates us from many advertising agencies is that Acart's purpose is not to stimulate excess consumption. As Social Issues Marketing specialists, we often try to get people to consume less, such as when we promote public transit and other sustainable options.



But within the agency, like any business, we face corporate responsibility challenges of our own. That's why we're continually adding to our agency environmental policy, moving towards reusable dishes, cups and glasses for meetings (instead of styrofoam plates, plastic forks, bottles, cans and takeout coffee packaging), installing lower-consumption lighting, and trying to decrease internal printing.



As well, we're looking into enhancing efficiencies, like motion sensors on lights in meeting rooms. Even the traditional use of environmentally-nasty foamcore for presentation boards is on its way out.



With our social marketing background, we realize that policy is not enough; you've got to change attitudes. That's why we formed "Cause Loop", our in-house environmental team that organizes charity and consciousness-raising events such as Stairs for Wheelchairs and our street cleanup.

But the challenge is ongoing. That's why, if you visit Acart, you'll notice all these little signs hanging around to remind ourselves and our clients that more sustainable living is an ongoing commitment.




At Acart, all signs point to positive change. Take it, boys: