Comic Relief’s coming up. It’s Lenny Henry’s last one.
For people of a certain age, Comic Relief means one thing. Ethiopia.
Emaciated, thirsty, poorly little kids on your TV, a call to action, then those same kids looking happy, healthy, well fed - followed by someone from Eastenders doing burlesque or something.
Emotional appeal. Simple action. Uplifting result.
The healthy kids, not the Eastenders thing.
Charity advertising 101. It works to the tune of millions of pounds a year.
So why, when the climate crisis threatens every soul on planet Earth, is environmental advertising so unbearably poor?
Take a look at this piece of shit.
Everything about it offends me. But let’s break it down.
The headline. The fucking headline.
Feeling crisis-y?
How smug. This was definitely written by someone who Googled “Generation Z” and then didn’t read any of the results.
Add in the hopeless, grey visual, and you can see sort of what they’re trying to do. Make young people feel emotional about the climate crisis. Step one of that process above.
Emotional appeal.
Shame it’s absolutely shite. It turns a global threat into yet another internal issue. It’s not the environment that’s the problem. It’s your feelings about it. Whoopsie, another menny health crisis for the Zoomers! Didn’t they have it bad enough with the cozzie livs?
It’s alright though. We’ve got step two now.
Simple action.
Plant more trees!
Easy!
Fuck. Generation Z don’t own any land to plant a tree on. Their flats don’t even have gardens, so they can’t beg their landlords to plant one either. Shit, shit, shit.
I feel bad. This advert’s drilling into my existential fears and not letting me address them. Gossage’s pre-written letter to your senator to save the Grand Canyon this ain’t.
Never seen that? It’s brilliant. He makes you worry that the Grand Canyon is being destroyed by oilmen and then gives you one simple, achievable action to prevent it. If you’ve not seen it, don’t worry. The Woodland Trust will give you a gig anyway.
Fine, skip to step three. Make me feel better with that lovely…
Uplifting result!
Nah. Jokes. The result here is that you’ll spend even more carbon going to a website to learn about the concept of trees.
Everything about this advert fails. It fails so hard that it irritated me enough to go against my mission of only sharing the very best ads and instead share this piece of shit.
And then I walked down the street and saw this.
Oh. That’s just as shit. Scientists here spend hours and hours thinking about climate change. That’s meant to be sort of uplifting is it? There’s no emotional appeal, or easy action, but there are italics. Good for them I guess?
Wait. Where am I? Where’s is this banner situated?
Oh yeah. It’s at the entrance to a car park.
That car park used to be woodland. They cut down all the trees and bulldozed a scout camp and shot all the deer to make room for parking for the RHS Garden. It’s alright though, I’ve heard the coffee shop is nice.
So there’s another lesson. If you’re going to make shit environmental advertising, don’t slap it right down next to something that simultateously undermines your pitch and the pitch of the equally shit environmental advertising a hundred yards up the road.
Please, someone get Lenny Henry on the blower.
Something mint - no bullshit, just benefit
Gett are doing some great ads positioning themselves as a better alternative to Uber. That message, a spacious lift in four minutes or less, is cracking. But it’s the quick, simple benefit-led copy and imagery that really brings that message to life.
Can someone get their agency to pitch Woodland Trust, please?
PS: I’ve been nothing but gushing about breakfast barons Surreal here before, but this great post from Nick Asbury brings in Surreal, class, and the limits of brand banter. Definitely give it a read: