KIRSHENBAUM BOND & PARTNERS “America, to be truly free in the world, needs to be dependent on itself and not on foreign oil,” said Lance Ferguson, associate creative director with Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners in New York. The slogan is meant to tap into both national pride and feelings of vulnerability.
DEUTSCH “We wanted to shake people up and let them know this is a grave situation,” said Bryan Black, an executive vice president with Deutsch in New York. In addition to the print ad, his firm proposed a mock magazine that would be aimed at readers who live in a polluted future.
ANOMALY “This is really more to be symbolic, but it has some practical application as well,” said Johnny Vulkan, a partner with Anomaly in New York. His firm proposed a campaign that would include these signs and temporarily lower the speed limit to 54 m.p.h. to demonstrate how a relatively modest effort could produce significant results.
Article:
A Terrible Thing to Waste. Or Try This.
By JEREMY W. PETERS
Published: December 10, 2006
ENERGY conservation has been linked with more than its fair share of ambitious causes: preserving American liberty and saving humanity, for starters. If ever an issue was ripe for one of those ubiquitous, can’t-get-it-out-of-your-head public service slogans, one would think that this is it. But advertisers and the federal government aren’t rushing to produce a public service campaign along the lines of “Only you can prevent forest fires” and “This is your brain on drugs,” which have become part of the national consciousness. The New York Times enlisted three advertising agencies known for their creative flair to take a shot.
The assignment was to imagine that the Ad Council, the nonprofit organization behind some of the most memorable public service announcements, has asked them to create the definitive campaign to promote energy conservation. Creating any P.S.A. is a chore, ad executives said, because the goal is getting people to alter everyday behavior. “To compel people to change their behavior, we need to help them decide what’s at stake is worth changing their lifestyle for,” said Gail Barlow, creative director with Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners, an advertising agency in New York. “You need to identify something that people hold dearly.” Is that their pocketbooks? Drinking water? Security?
The White House has said that the nation’s “addiction” to oil threatens its ability to compete in the global economy. “We are too dependent on oil,” President Bush said recently. Experience shows that even if faced with the loss of something they say they hold dear, it is hard to sway many Americans because they don’t see the need to change. Vice President Dick Cheney, the former chief executive of an oil-services company, famously dismissed conservation as a “personal virtue” in 2001. Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma and chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee until control shifts to the Democrats, has called global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” In a committee hearing last week, he said that global warming was exaggerated by “advocates for alarmism.”
Here are the efforts of three advertisers, two of whom said unabashedly that they have no problem with alarmism.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/weekinreview/10peters.html