October 2009

The Archives

Joe Brewer
How Stripping Supermodels Promote Climate Action
10.29.09 | Permalink | 11 Comments

Also published at Cognitive Policy Works.
This video was released as part of Bill McKibben’s global awareness-building exercise last week for 350.org,an organization promoting the idea that carbon emission levels above 350 parts per million are dangerous:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdz555JBIwY&feature=player_embedded

I’d like to treat this as a case study in visual metaphors and conceptual frames to show how insights into [...]
Jim Mitchell
A bedtime story: DECC’s new climate ad
10.28.09 | Permalink | 4 Comments

A couple of weeks ago a new ad started being shown on television in the UK highlighting the need to act on CO2. In the light of how many of the posts here touch on advertising, I would be interested in identity campaigners’ views on it. It’s at the bottom of DECC’s [...]
Jon Alexander
Kevin Roberts talks about Do One Thing
10.26.09 | Permalink | 1 Comment

For those who don’t know, Kevin Roberts is the worldwide CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi. As an employee of the recently formed Saatchi Saatchi Fallon group, I stay closer to what he’s up to than most. His most recent effort on the sustainability front comes through Adam Werbach’s Saatchi S outfit; Adam is a leading figure [...]
Tom Crompton
Lexus and jealousy
10.23.09 | Permalink | Comments Off

Shouldn’t advertisements that deliberately work to drive positional consumption be banned, working as they do to undermine the values that must underpin concern about global challenges like climate change?
Which is more damaging - the highly polluting car (219gCo2/km) or the psychological havoc that Lexus’s ad agency wreak in selling it?
How will we come to view [...]
Joe Brewer
Limits and Potential of Fun for Social Change
10.19.09 | Permalink | Comments Off

Republished from Cognitive Policy Works.
Last week I wrote about how fun may be important for efforts to advance the sustainability movement. In Fun Theory and the Ethics of Marketing I distinguished the ethical problems with brand marketing (exploitation of human motivation to drive consumerism) from the prospects for using motivational psychology to engage the populace [...]
Renée Lertzman
The dispassionate heart, or the heart in denial?
10.19.09 | Permalink | Comments Off

There has been a recent spate of opinion pieces, bemoaning the lack of passion, heart, emotion and related ‘affective’ aspects of how we (public, leadership, etc) are responding to the urgent pressures concerning environmental issues, including climate change.
The general tenor of these pieces tends to express frustration, bewilderment, and sometimes [...]
Joe Brewer, Nicolas Ceasar
Fun Theory and the Ethics of Marketing
10.15.09 | Permalink | 5 Comments

A virus is sweeping the internet this week. You’ll recognize it when you start to laugh, then repost it for others to share. No, I’m not talking about a vicious computer program that attacks your operating system. I’m referring to the viral spread of this two minute video by Fun Theory, a marketing experiment funded [...]
Tom Crompton
Rowan Williams on Climate Change
10.14.09 | Permalink | 1 Comment

The Archbishop of Canterbury gave a speech on the environmental crisis last night. Much of it resonates with our identity campaigning approach.

“Many of the things which have moved us towards ecological disaster have been distortions in our sense of who and what we are, and their overall effect has been to isolate us more and more [...]