Hasta La Creative!

Climate change could be irreversible. And kids will have to live with the consequences. Because not enough adults are listening. When renowned environmentalist David Suzuki says to them “So you’re going to have to solve it,” I thought they were actually going to start brainstorming, which would have been one hell of an insightful spot along the lines of “even kids can come up with a solution.” Instead all he did was just put the fear of God, er, Mother Nature into them. It’s a shame. Because aside from shaming adults who might see this, and scaring the children in the audience, there’s not much of a call to action in this spot the ask to be part of yet another organization.

This spot was made for the Quebecois/French speaking population of Canada.

Translation:

TITLE: How do we stop climate change?

Girl: So this is a polar bear that lives in the North and because of climate change, he now lives in an animal dome. That’s a place where we put animals who are in danger.

TITLE: Let’s not leave this problem to our children.
TITLE: Our Today. There Tomorrow.

When he’s not busy punching boobs Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau likes to appear on 60 Minutes to lecture Americans about how they should pay more attention to the world. He might stop throwing rocks at glass houses (and punching boobs for that matter) and tend to his own garden. Because if this PSA for the Salvation Army Canada is correct, 1 in 10 Canadians live in poverty and the majority of Canadians have no idea.
To get the word out, the Salvation Army held a very different kind of open house. One that was plastered with facts and figures in each room to show just how dire the situation is for nearly 3.2 million Canadians. In every room there was a stat that drove home the situation in what may be the best contextual advertising I’ve seen in a while.
I like how it stops people in their tracks in such a big way. Here they are, looking for a new house, because presumably they have enough discretionary income to buy one, and they are literally spending a few minutes living in the shoes of someone who skips meals, is late on payments, has to go to the food bank and can’t afford basic necessities.
The Salvation Army also created a virtual tour so anyone can see the staggering statistics.
This activation is incredibly smart work from Grey Canada. Really great work.

You know, when I first got the release for the Digital Billboard that I posted here: “Funeral Home encourages motorists to Text and Drive in billboard”, and I saw the image, I thought “that’s great, that’ll make people do a double take!” It may take a moment for the “aha-moment” to hit, but eventually it will. Or so I thought.

John St. in Montreal left nothing to chance though, they set up the website www.wathanfuneral.com, just in case people would be very angry with the “funeral home”, and wanting to complain somewhere. A drab site that looks a lot like a funeral home’s site welcomes any potential complainers:

If you’re here, you’ve probably seen our “Text and Drive” billboard. And if you have, you probably came to this website to tell us what horrible people we are for running an ad like that. And you’d be right.

It is a horrible thing for a funeral home to do.
But we’re not a funeral home.

We’re just trying to get Canadians to stop texting and driving, which is projected to kill more people in Ontario this year than drinking and driving. That’s right. More. And while most people wouldn’t even think about drinking and driving, over half of Ontario drivers admit to reading texts while behind the wheel. That’s more than half of the drivers on the road today risking their lives, their passengers’ lives and the lives of their fellow motorists and pedestrians.

Which should make you even madder
than our billboard did.

Well, maybe a handful would have to see that website to ‘get’ the billboard, I figured, and then I sent the billboard out on our social media, and watched as many many many many people began complaining how a funeral home could have such bad taste. Thereby proving that once it’s a bite-sized headline on twitter, few ever read the articles before reacting. I’ll hand it to you John St. , you pegged the public just right when creating the site too. Well done. I just hope motorists don’t rubberneck and forget to watch where they’re going when they see this thing. And I hope people who doubt this digital billboard exists, watch the video.

The agency approached Cieslok Media (in Toronto) who embraced the idea and the cause. “As a premium large format company, we are right there on the streets and highways where distracted driving takes place every day,” says Jörg Cieslok, President and CEO of Cieslok Media. “We thought this was a powerful way to tell people how dangerous distracted driving is and hopefully get them to stop doing it. It’s also a very impactful way of showing how powerful digital signage can be.”

I love the sarcasm here. I love that the long-running sentences manages to pack in both American and European stereotypes with tongue firmly planted in cheek, while name-dropping drool-worthy designer items carefully painting a picture in your mind that corresponds to what’s described. I love that the response to a photo-agency brief is a campaign without photos.

This is pretty bold.

Maureen is a retiree whose going to teach Youtube star Typical Gamer about retirement, while Typical Gamer is going to teach her how to play Far Cry Primal. They would have played Destiny but let’s face it, the old gal’s worked hard enough throughout her life to have to start grinding away all over again for little reward. HEYOOOOOO.
I love the simplicity of this concept and the chemistry that is between these two. Maureen doesn’t patronize Typical Gamer when he’s all “to be honest, retirement has never crossed my mind.” Maureen helpfully explains she was in the same boat. No one thinks about retirement when they’re young. Why would they? But then one day you wake up and it’s there. There’s very few jobs with pensions any more. And people are too busy living beyond their means to delay gratification by saving.
Typical Gamer’s says his vision of retiring is being able to hang out and do what you love but he quickly senses that’s not really the case. Maureen basically is like “Yeah– you can do whatever the hell you want–IF you saved up.” She feels a lot of empathy for the generation coming up because it will be harder. Things are more expensive, our lifespan is longer, and maybe it isn’t a great idea to cash in the 401K you put ten grand into just to live in Vietnam for a year and make Vines about it.
The pairing here is fantastic. Quite authentic, and respectful. Typical Gamer seems like a nice bloke, too. Hopefully some of this stuff sinks in. As Maureen says “Now I’ve got you thinkin’.”
Regardless I love the fact this campaign is using so-called influencers for something more than just selling material goods to millennials. This shit’s important, yo.

it’s never too late to learn to be a Youtube Star. or about retirement. In this content, we watch as Andrew and his new pal Livingstone make Jerk Chicken and music together. Andrew takes the sounds of the cooking and makes a song out of it. That’s Andrew’s thing on Youtube. He makes songs out of sounds. Kinda like Nike did in 2005, and 2001, too. You know?

Livingstone lets Andrew know that now that he’s retired he has plenty of time to hang with his wife. And he could do that because he planned ahead and made sure there was enough money to do so. Meanwhile, Andrew learns he’s gonna have to actually save money because being Internet Famous doesn’t pay offfor the majority of people.

At the end, Livingstone gets to hear Andrew’s musical creation. It’s fun to see how much chemistry they have. Not sure if Livingstone has kids but it feels like there’s a “son I never had” quality to this.

Great campaign.

You have to drive quite a long time to see the stars in Canada. Subaru wants to change that. Developed in partnership with the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, #SubaruDarkSky is encouraging people to get out there and see the night sky. There’s also a nifty website with astronomy lessons and tips on where to see meteor showers and more. As for the spot itself, it’s simple storytelling and quietly effective.