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!

2012's first epic social media fail brought to you by Volkswagen

For months, Greenpeace UK has been campaigning against Volkswagen's corporate opposition to new environmental laws in Europe.

According to Greenpeace's Star Wars themed campaign site (making fun of VW's Darth Vader Super Bowl ad):

"VW opposes key environmental laws we need if we’re going to stop our planet going the way of Alderaan (bye bye). But all is not lost. We feel the good in Volkswagen.
All of us in the Rebellion are calling on Volkswagen to turn away from the Dark Side and give our planet a chance. 

Despite its green image, Volkswagen is spending millions of Euros every year funding lobby groups who are trying to stop Europe increasing its commitment to greenhouse gas reductions from 20% to 30% by 2020. Progressive companies – from Google to Ikea, Sony, Unilever and Philips – support the target. Volkswagen can’t afford to be left behind. 

More efficient cars are cheaper to run, use less oil and emit less CO2. Volkswagen has a history of lobbying against the strong European standards that we need to kick our oil addiction. As the biggest car company in Europe, with the biggest responsibility, VW must change and support strong standards from now on. 

Volkswagen says it wants to be “the most eco-friendly automaker in the world”, but only 6% of the cars it sold in 2010 were its most efficient models. It has the technology to do better. VW must set out its plan to make its entire fleet oil-free by 2040."

The "Rebel Alliance" at Greenpeace seems to have found its Death Star: Volkswagen UK's Facebook page:

After the company's admin posted an innocent-enough update, "We hope you had a fantastic New Year. Do you have any resolutions and what would you like to see us do more of this year?" the dogfight began. Almost 1000 damning comments, as of this writing, and not one response.

While the organized criticism itself will become a cautionary tale for many big brands on social media, the moral of the story will be lost on most. The key to being an effective social brand is not avoiding, deleting or even ignoring criticism; it is engaging the negative.

Chapstick figured that out the hard way when a fairly tame campaign idea went totally off the rails and they responded by deleting negative comments. Commenters just went elsewhere to vent, and the brand lost a key opportunity to learn more about its audience.

Eventually, they saw the light and issued this abject apology:

“We see that not everyone likes our new ad, and please know that we certainly didn’t mean to offend anyone! Our fans and their voices are at the heart of our new advertising campaign, but we know we don’t always get it right. We’ve removed the image and will share a newer ad with our fans soon!  

“We apologize that fans have felt like their posts are being deleted and while we never intend to pull anyone’s comments off our wall, we do comply with Facebook guidelines and remove posts that use foul language, have repetitive messaging, those that are considered spam-like (multiple posts from a person within a short period of time) and are menacing to fans and employees.” 

Volkswagen, on the other hand, is either too negligent or too scared to respond on their own Facebook page. And that's a real failure to communicate.

In my experience, every brand or cause has an answer to criticism that won't necessarily be widely accepted, but is rational and at least partly valid. There are two sides to every argument, especially when it comes to awkward issues like greenwashing and corporate social responsibility.

Volkswagen UK is being called to task on its side of the story.

On their corporate site, they claim:

"We care as much as you do about the environment so we design our cars to have minimal impact on it at every stage: during manufacture, while on the road and at the end of their lives. 

Of course, we also want you to enjoy driving your Volkswagen. That means our engineers are constantly working to produce cars that offer great performance with better fuel economy and fewer harmful emissions. Our Golf BlueMotion for example, is currently one of the most fuel efficient cars of it class, with CO2 emissions of just 99g/km thanks to its start/stop technology and regenerative braking. Click here to find out more about our BlueMotion technologies. 

We also use recycled and recyclable materials where possible and the most environmentally friendly construction techniques 

A car doesn't just have an impact on the environment when it's being driven on the road. Download Viavision to see the whole story - from factory to shredder - and to understand how Volkswagen is working to minimise energy consumption, emissions and waste throughout a vehicle's life. 

So when you decide to drive one of our cars you can feel you're making a choice for a better future, too. 

Please visit our Mobility and sustainability website or download our mobility and sustainability report for more information on what Volkswagen are doing in the area of mobility and sustainability."

But if the Greenpeace accusations of corporate lobbying against tighter environmental standards is true, then they have some 'splainin to do. And that's exactly what they should do... not in the echo chamber of their fan base, but to their most vocal detractors. They should explain what the truth is, what their motives are, and how that fits into their brand. Whether Greenpeace members agree with it or not, they will at least have had their day in court on social media. And if they handle themselves rationally, respectfully, and truthfully (even if it's just "their" truth) they can use this as an opportunity to repair and even grow the reputation of their brand.

...or not. It's been two days already, and the PR nightmare is going global.

Update: AdFreak picked up this story, and includes the Greenpeace ad:

The SoCOAL Network

Coal power sucks. Have you ever really looked at an urban photograph from 100+ years ago? Those black clouds aren't rain.

And yet coal — an industrial era technology — continues to be a major source of energy around the world. The US leads the dirty charge, with 45% of its electricity coming from coal.

While regulators have a role to play, so do consumers. And that's why Greenpeace has decided to use the power of social media to try to shame Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg into using sustainable energy to power his network.

According to Greenpeace's Executive Director, Kumi Naidoo:

A company such as Facebook, which now has 500 million users world-wide, can have both a direct and indirect effect on this reality. Direct because the company can reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions by phasing coal out of its electricity use. Indirect in that a true display of leadership will set a high bar for the rest of the industry and help catalyze a clean energy transformation.

Here's the vid:



Pretty amusing stuff. And timely, given that "The Social Network" is about to premiere. Can it work? That's up to us...

Carpet F-Bombing the Gulf

Marc from Osocio Weblog shared this link, from gonzo activists Unf--kTheGulf.com. But before you watch it, I have to warn you that this has a lot of strong language in it.

How much? The number of times the dreaded "F word" is said in this video puts Al Swearengen from the series Deadwood, a bleeped-out rap video, and even a teenage boy trying to impress his buddies to shame.

Ready? (Headphones!)

Oil Spill Charity "F-Bomb-A-Thon" from UnF--kTheGulf.com on Vimeo.

The call-to-action is to buy an "Unf--k the Gulf" tee shirt, the profits of which will go to charities that will clean up the Gulf — as well as to fund anti-oil activism. The site offers a choice of where your money goes. The recipients are Louisiana Wildlife Rehabilitators Association, LA Gulf Response, Earthjustice (who are launching a lawsuit against BP) and Greenpeace.



Will it help? It's a pretty good meme. And if it can squeeze five bucks out of a few thousand slacktivists, it can't hurt.

The campaign was developed by Luke Montgomery of Good Ideas for Good Causes, a "charity crusader, media maven and design dork".

Ad Hacks

People have probably been messing with ads since ads first appeared. Whether it's drawing a moustache (or worse) on the fashion model, adding social commentary to the copy, or re-editing TV spots, people just seem to love to repurpose creative and media placements to their own ends.

One of the best-known trends in this phenomenon is culturejamming, a term used by the people of Adbusters and Greenpeace to describe simple changes made to ads or logos that reveal their true nature:




You get the idea.

But in today's electronic media, jamming opportunities can be much more dramatic, such as when people break into electronic billboards.



So it was only inevitable that someone would find a way to access the giant video billboards going up in major cities all over the world.

And it came to pass, last Friday, that late-night traffic in Moscow came to a standstill as a 9 x 6 metre video billboard near the Kremlin suddenly started screening hard core pornography.



As amusing as this is, it kind of seems like a missed opportunity to make a really grand statement. People got out of their cars and videotaped the incident, and it's still making the news rounds three days later.

The billboard company owner accuses the hackers of "hooliganism". I just think they displayed a lack of imagination.

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.