Green Thing Blog

Many, many thanks to Pearl and Dean who are very kindly showing our new Green Thing film at more than 50 Vue cinema foyer TVs throughout the UK this November.  More exposure for Green Thing = more people doing the green thing = more carbon saved...

And thanks also to our fabulous media partners at Manning Gottlieb OMD and OMD UK in general who helped organise this.

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Yes, yes - it's been around for ages. A WWF billboard by DraftFCB in Toronto that thinks it's a sundial and illustrates rising sea levels by casting a wavy shadow over the copy. Still a bit clever.

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You know those disclaimers that turn up on the bottom of emails: "Paper doesn't grow on trees. Please think before you print this email."? Well Ad agency BBH decided the world needed something much more imaginative and effective, so they came up with the i.Saw.

This spoof device - the world's first USB-powered chainsaw - led users to a downloadable app which makes a loud, angry tree-cutting noise every time you're about to print. It acts like an alarm-clock conscience on your PC to remind you to think before you print.

It's a great example of something that spreads online by being both interesting and useful. It's interesting as a piece of media (the spoof iSaw site got 1.5m visits, was written up in Wired and Gizmondo and created a buzz on Twitter and Reddit and the like) and also useful as a piece of software - it really does force you to think about what you're printing and whether you really need to.

The concept is brilliant, although in reality it does get a wee bit annoying and seems to be triggered by commands other than 'Cmd P', so the novelty does wear off a bit (although apprently this is a bug that's being fixed).

That said it's still clever, witty and ingenious and I wish we'd thought of it ;-) And the more computers its on, the more paper that gets saved - so download it here and spread the word.

[Spotted on BBH Labs via Mel Exon]

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Another load of total nonsense from Total's lame "our energy is your energy" advertising campaign trying the 'we're all in it together' position on for size.

"Imagine if confronting climate change and solving energy needs were inseparable" they muse. Not much to imagine since these two issues are obviously inextricably linked.The problem is, while posing the question they seem mostly focused on business as usual. Which makes these kind of environmental claims or associations  irrelevant and distracting greenwash.

It would be helpful if an oil firm like Total told us exactly what percentage of money and resource they're spending on developing clean energy solutions and how they're planning to help us all move away from the fossil fuel economy to tackle climate change.

The use of micro-homilies like "Common Interest" (note the 'Co' stylised / highlighted to connect with Co2 - purlease) is all related to the idea of "deep framing" which I'm going to a very interesting session about today organised by behavious change strategist Tom Compton of the WWF.

'Frames' are the conceptual models and perspectives we all have which act as the lens through which we see the world. As cognitive linguist George Lakoff (who, rather excitingly, will be video conferencing into this WWF session) notes, “all words are defined relative to frames”. So when Total uses phrases like "our energy is your energy" and "common purpose" they're activating emotional mental circuitry that makes us perceive them a certain way.

In other words: they are part of us - and we're all trying to work out this climate change problem together - rather than one of world's largest oil companies with an order of magnitude greater authority, power and responsibility to confront climate change than any individual citizen or consumer.

Interesting stuff, I'll report back later....

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Hmmm, does anyone else think this is idiotic or is it just me?

I snapped this on the tube this morning. A campaign to encourage you to fly to the Canary Islands to beat the "winter blues" featuring a polar bear to symbolise winter.

In itself, given the connection between air travel, climate change and polar bears, the idea falls somewhere in-between 'poor taste' and 'thoughtless lunacy'.

Add to this the launch timing of the first week of Copenhagen - the most significant global political event of our lifetime to tackle the civilisation-threatening issue of climate change, widely symbolised by, errm, iconic images of polar bears - and it borders on outrageously offensive.

Is this some kind of gag from the Yes Men or something? Or are people really that stoopid?

NOT a Green Thing.

ps. I'mnot sure I agree with this form of communication either but perhaps the Canary Islands tourist board should have a look at this: http://www.dothegreenthing.com/blog/plane_stupid_or_plain_stupid

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