Wunderman spikes interest in Earth Hour 2010
Wunderman Sydney has created what they believe to be another world first initiative as part of this year’s Earth Hour campaign.
‘Plant Spikes’ follows last year’s multi award-winning augmented reality project ‘Earth in Your Hands’ that encouraged more than 35000 people to create a 3D Earth. The 2010 initiative has opened a new media channel aimed at businesses around the country.
Plant Spikes is a low-budget environmentally friendly way to reachstaff in office buildings and encourage them to get their businessessupporting Earth Hour.
To penetrate offices and get maximumimpact, Wunderman chose office greenery to carry this year’s Earth Hourmessage. Their solution was to create spikes that could be “planted”into office pot plants, distributed by plant hire companies duringusual watering rounds.
In what could be a world first,Wunderman and STI Lilyfield developed a new ink containing naturalplant fertiliser that is released to feed the pot plant as the spikebiodegrades in the soil.
Wunderman CD Matt Batten said thespikes have proved to be a spectacularly simple way of raisingawareness of business’ role in creating pollution and getting officeworkers on-side to help reduce emissions. The message on the plantspikes was simple, ‘I help your environment. Please help mine.’
“Theteam delivered a triple innovation by using office greenery as a mediachannel for Earth Hour, then engaging a whole new distribution channelthrough plant hire companies and the brilliant initiative to developand use a fertilising ink. They’ve actually produced a piece ofmarketing that physically helps a small part of the environment.”
STILilyfield printers developed FSC-certified paper and an organic liquidfertiliser was mixed with vegetable-based inks to createfertiliser-rich ink capable of superior quality print that benefits theplant as it naturally breaks down.
According to Nick Tunstall,STI Lilyfield, “The trick was to get a fertiliser that would not damagevaluable printing presses, mix with the ink and not affect printabilityor quality. After much brain storming and hard work, we felt we had theright product and produced an innovative piece of work which we arereally proud of.”
The fertilising spikes have been distributedby TPR Group, which supplies office plants to more than 1500 businessesacross Australia.
Wunderman have also helped Earth Hour with acouple of digital elements this year – an web-app that lets you viewwebsites by candlelight, and a Virtual Light Switch as a fun facebookapplication and a microsite.
WRITER: THEODORA GERAKITEYS
ART DIRECTOR: PAOLO MEUCCI
CREATIVE DIRECTOR – MATT BATTEN
PRODUCTION MANAGER – PAUL HAYES
PRINTER – STI LILYFIELD
DISTRIBUTOR – TPR GROUP
36 Comments
Brilliant work.
Wouldn’t be more fun to send people a pair of sex dice?
Should be a shoe in at the Spikes awards.
Please God, make Earth Hour go away.
Please stop this Earth Hour shit.
It’s meaningless, and it only means we’ll see more of Todd hawking Leos.
If 35,000 people wrote to Kevin Rudd instead of creating some sexy little, award winning ‘3D Earth’ you might make a difference.
MP’s do what they fucking want.
And we like to win awards.
That’s why Earth Hour’s shit. Always was, always will be.
Write a fucking letter. Send an e-mail to your MP.
Democracy occasionally works. Cannes Titanium just buys Todd a new car.
(Environmentally friendly probably. After all ‘so is his agency.’)
Bollocks.
if Leo’s really want to make a difference to the environment they’d start a campaign to support a nuclear power industry in Australia. Every other grown-up country is going nuke, even the Italians and now, those bastions of greenness, Sweden. Note the founder of Greenpeace has just declared Greenpeace has contributed to ‘global warming’ by refusing to consider nuclear power as a genuine energy alternative. He made no mention of Earth Hour.
Honda did it first, and better. Sorry.
http://adsoftheworld.com/media/ambient/honda_plant_letter
Um…can you guys fucking read? Wunderman did this turd, not Leo’s.
4.34, let’s just say it’s a shoe in at a certain direct marketing award show.
Cute idea. Despite the fact it reeks of “We need to create an award-winning Earth Hour piece” rather than “We need to create an Earth Hour piece that makes a difference.”
Agree, what the hell has earth hour actually achieved? Would love it if it has done something meaningful, but just can’t see it. One day one hour a planet saving it don’t make…what of the other 8,759? Please someone put it out of its misery.
This idea is biodegradable.
Earth hour is such a load of tripe. It’s not planet earth that’s in trouble: it’s human kind. We’re in great danger of thinking ads amount to a row of beans in the ‘peer-reviewed’ world of climate debate / change.
Turn off your lights for an hour. Pah! How about stop making direct-junk-mail for a minute! Just a minute!
but it’s fun when they turn all the lights off… 🙂
No one seems to care but…Earth Hour has eclipsed the brand it was supposed to benefit. Does any punters know who the World Wildlife Fund are? Did Earth Hour really do anything to help wildlife? Does anyone know why there is a panda on all the Earth Hour coms? NO.
This advertising exercise has FAILED. It does not raise awareness for the conservation of wildlife and endangered species. For the client it failed in it’s first year and it continues to fail to this day. Even on the current earth hour website a tiny logo appears for the WWF but I can’t even click through to the clients own site. I hope the WWF is still not funding this rubbish.
Why all the fuss anyway? Turning off your lights is a rediculous token jesture. Why not catch public transport?
World first initiative my aunt fanny. this has been done several times around the world. Sure, it’s ok to pay ‘homage’ to someone else’s idea if you can get away with it, but don’t get your tackle out in front of all your peers and claim it’s a world first. makes you look like lazy fools who don’t know how to use Google.
And makes the rest of us wonder what kind of out-of-control egos are haunting the corridors of Wunderman these days. Lester would be spinning in his box for sure.
If this industry cared as much about the environment as it did about ‘pointless’ awards then the world really would be a better place.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
You know, the day a sweet, simple and (taken in context) probably quite effective idea actually gets acknowledged as such on this blog, I’ll probably die of shock.
This is nice, original, straightforward and achieves exactly what it’s supposed to – direct people to a website to find out more. That’s called direct marketing, by the way, and they’ve done a decent job of it.
And no, 10.13 Anonymous, this bears no resemblence to the Honda execution – different medium, different execution, different channel, entirely different intent and use. But yay you – you got the first narky little “seen it before” link in there, didn’t you? How very clever.
For fuck’s sake.
Ok Matt, (sorry, 2:23pm) you’ve had your say. Bit of a shame about the bad language. Hardly necessary methinks.
You can’t hide a shit idea under the veil of direct marketing. And 2.23, you just proved my point. Like I said, it’s a shoe in at a certain direct marketing award show. Wonder why?
Couple of questions 1:30:
WWF? Why are you bringing the Ultimate Warrior into this?? I’m really sorry to be the one to tell you but professional wrestling is fake. It’s time to grow up.
Not Matt sorry Gerry. Not a Wunderman employee, not even a friend.
Just very weary of everyone attacking whatever creative work people are foolhardy enough to try and PR here.
Malcolm, be careful…..What you say in “Fury” may see you blacklisted. I say that in “jest”(er).
Wow, you guys really get riled up about Earth Hour. This just in: Earth Hour is now its own brand, and like any brand, it needs to be advertised.
No. Earth hour is lame. It must be demonised and ridiculed. Boo Earth Hour. Hisssssssssssss.
It’s a nice idea. I hope one day I can come up with such a nice idea that it gets PR’d on Campaign Brief so all you old hacks can have a fucking whinge and masturbate over your own anger at never having had an idea as nice as this.
4.32, that was as good. Almost as good as your publicity shot. Bahahaha.
Seriously though, can someone please send me some sex dice?
4:32 who have you met that masturbates over their own anger? Or is that just something you like to do. Do you do it in front of a mirror? Just curious.
get a life 4;32.
earth hour is what’s wrong with advertising. all show and no results but the agency gets to win awards.
in fact its counter-productive because all this look-at-me want-it-now generation make a big deal about turning off their lights for an hour but that’s all they do – until next year that is. then they spend hours, days weeks telling everyone how green they are because they turned off.
total counter-productive crap
Well put 5:17. Very sobering remark.
Why PR crap?
Crap is just crap.
Self indulgent tossers…
But at least the credits tell us who the tossers are…
It’s really sad when other agencies are trying to win awards off the back of a campaign created by another agency.
Do your own campaign. Pig hour or something.
3.21pm – ADMA aka the husband and wife show? Pathetic. The work’s not great. But not as bad as that 3D Earth crap.
I’m hoping that one will turn up in the plant near my desk. Nice idea.
Earth Hour is a load of sh!t….
Global warming is an even bigger load of sh!t….
Why???..
1) Because we are still driving around in Petrol powered polluting vehicles when we have had the technology for at least 15 years to go 100% electric ZERO emission cars.
2) Governments ripped up our electric tram systems with no mercy and replaced them with diesel polluting powered buses.
Why did they do this??…….MONEY! plain and simple….think of all the revenue the federal goverment gets from the petrol excise tax!…and also the fact that the oil billion-airs make their millions from petrol….
So to all you boring politically correct people, please stop ranting about how we need to “save the planet” and start coming up with REAL solutions instead of all these pointless band aid ideas.