How a Juice Brand Used Unpaid Celebs to Get Fans Clamoring for a Drink Made of Charcoal

Never mind goji berries, chia seeds and kale. On Sept. 9, Suja Juice, a trendy entry in the ongoing battle for our superfood dollars, released Midnight Tonic, an all-black, limited-edition beverage that it spent weeks seeding, without explanation, to health-conscious celebrities with active social media lives. 

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Kids Try to Solve Climate Change in PSA Campaign, Because Grownups Certainly Aren't

Climate change isn’t your problem—it’s your children’s problem. At least, it will be if the world’s current crop of adults fail to act. 

A new campaign from the government of Ontario, brought to you by Grey Canada, makes that very argument with help from pop environmentalist David Suzuki. In the first ad, Suzuki lectures an auditorium full of kids on the failure of grownups to sufficiently address global warming: 

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Want Fresh Produce? This Agency Helped a Grocer Grow Food Right in the Store

As if self-checkout and bagging our own groceries at the supermarket weren’t humiliating enough, now we’re expected to harvest our own vegetables in the produce section! 

Supermarket chain Zona Sul recently transformed shelves at its Rio de Janeiro-based flagship store into vegetable gardens, encouraging customers to dig into the soil to pick lettuce, basil, peppers and scallions. 

“We mainly wanted to reach Zona Sul customers who shop for vegetables in other locations, such as street markets or vegetable-specific stores,” Fábio Onofre, creative director at agency WMcCann Rio, tells AdFreak. “Those are the customers that still think they can find fresher food elsewhere. This way, we could truly show them that at Zona Sul, everything is really, really fresh.”

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DDB Turned Lonely Island's 'I Just Had Sex' Into a Song About Endangered Species

Yeah, they hit that. Want to hear the deets?

Some swaggering cartoon pandas sing a slightly more animalistic version of Lonely Island’s viral blockbuster “I Just Had Sex” in a new campaign about endangered wildlife. Those bears aren’t looking for back slaps just because they got lucky, though. They’re propagating the species. So it’s OK if they tell the world about their adventures in shagging, even if they admit their partner ate bamboo the whole time. (Doesn’t matter, had sex!)

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Bob Dylan Went Electric. And You Should Too, With a Plug-In Hybrid, Says Audi

A new hybrid-electric Audi is just like that time Bob Dylan shocked audiences by playing an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival, says Audi.

This new video from the automaker, a sponsor of the 2015 festival, interviews a mix of historical figures, like documentarian Murray Lerner, and modern musicians, like Courtney Barnett, Jim James of My Morning Jacket, and Colin Meloy of The Decemberists—artists who were part of the lineup at Newport this summer, which celebrated the 50th anniversary of famous Dylan’s 1965 show.

So, what exactly are the differences between a Fender Stratocaster and an Audi A3 Sportback e-tron, you might ask? It doesn’t matter, because when you’re driving around in your sweet $40,000 car, you’ll feel like a pioneer and a rebel cranking out creamy licks on your finely tuned instrument.

It also may be worth noting that while it’s widely believed audiences booed Dylan’s decision to go electric, that account is also disputed—other theories include that crowds were upset by bad sound quality, or the shortness of his set. But that’s nowhere near as good a story.

To be fair, the clip does include some charming rumination on music and its evolution. But the implicit message—”Don’t hate progress. Buy an Audi”—isn’t the most compelling song. Especially when other car marketers are making the case that fuel-efficient alternates can literally run on cow crap.

CREDITS
Client: Audi
Spot: “Plugging In”
Executive Producer: Joseph Assad
Director: Phil Pinto
Narration: ?Holly Laessig
Agency: PMK•BNC/Vowel
Production Company: One Thousand Percent
Producer: Tyler Byrne, Kristopher Rey-Talley & Rebecca Assing
Director of Photography: Sam Wootton
2nd Unit Director: Antonio Santos
Associate Producer: Victoria Lada
Editorial: One Thousand Percent
Editor: David Yoonha Park & Ryan Dickie
Post Producer: Kristopher Rey-Talley
VFX Company: Motion Atelier
Nuke Artist: Paulo Dias
Titles/Graphics: Wax Magazine
Animation: Konrad & Paul
Sound Designer: Colin Alexander
Mixer: Greg Tobler

Denver Water's Outdoor Campaign Gets Even Cooler With These Incredible Handmade Ads

The well of inspiration apparently never runs dry for Denver Water’s long-running “Use Only What You Need” campaign. And while Sukle Advertising’s lauded conservation initiative often features eye-catching public installations, this year’s installment is brimming with artistry.

The agency used diverse materials such as colored pencils, Post-it notes, clay, crushed soda cans, Legos, yarn and string to create 10 original piece of art. Each depicts water in various forms, such as drops, splashes, cascades, showers and spray. The work adorns bus shelters around Denver, as well as print and online ads. The headline, “You can’t make this stuff,” drives home the message that water is a non-renewable resource.

Most of the results are quite splashy. For example…

I’d love to see this “fluffy” Lego cloud hovering over my block:

These pencil-tipped waves make a good point:

Someone should put a cap on this knitted-yarn faucet:

Here’s a fresh take on string theory:

This Post-it note poster is good to the last, well, you know:

“Consumers often see conservation as a sacrifice, something they have to give up, which they often aren’t willing to do,” says agency founder and creative director Mike Sukle. “We have, instead, used the approach of ‘not wasting.’ Consumers see waste differently than conservation, so the messaging of ‘Use Only What You Need’ follows the mind of the consumer that wasting is wrong.”

Water use in Denver recently hit a record low, so it appears the campaign, now in its ninth year, is having an impact. Alas, a local Lego shortage looms large, as Sukle reports using 6,000 of the colorful plastic bricks for the new ads.

Check out more executions below.



Droga5, Morgan Spurlock Show You How the Toyota Mirai Is 'Fueled by Bullsh*t'

Toyota wants you to know it has a car that literally runs on bullshit.

This new ad for the automaker’s Mirai fuel cell vehicle features an engineer visiting a dairy farm, loading a pickup bed with cow manure, taking it to be processed into hydrogen and using it to power a ride.

Directed by Morgan Spurlock, the ad is the first in a series titled “Fueled by Everything.” Created by Droga5, the campaign hopes to persuade consumers that hydrogen cars are a viable alternative to internal combustion engines, despite a skeptical marketplace—hence the ad’s mix of folksy and defensive. (Ron the farmer’s cool demeanor casts doubt on his sincerity at moments, but there are some real action shots of heifers unloading.)

A small number of Mirais go on sale in California this fall, and Toyota’s tack is to point out the abundance of fuel—not just crap, but also sunlight, wind and more—presumably in part because a leading criticism of the technology is the shortage of hydrogen stations. One doesn’t follow the other, but Toyota is working with other car makers to develop infrastructure in the Golden State.

It’s not clear though, whether drivers will be able to bring their own manure.



Pentagram Designs Climate Change Posters Made Completely Out of Emojis

Emojis are everywhere these days—even printed on posters at an environmental rally.

The popular social-media symbols found their way onto protest signs (made of what isn’t clear) at the recent People’s Climate March in London, thanks to design firm Pentagram, which created and handed out the placards.

Each featured mini emoji poems like “[Panda Bear] … [Hour Glass] … [Skull]” because, you know, pandas are endangered. Another triad: “[Tractor] … [Tree] … [Horrified Face]” (with the tree tipped to its side), translating roughly to “deforestation is bad.” It wasn’t all fire and brimstone, with sunnier odes to bicycling and recycling.

They look great—clear and clever, if perhaps a touch glib given the subject matter. But as Pentagram suggests on its blog, they’re certainly an effective antidote to “scrawled angst.” Nobody needs another badly handwritten rant.

It’s particularly nice that, unlike the proprietary emoticons (or even more complex visual systems) that brands have been conjuring of late, these are essentially all the standard emojis you might find on your iPhone (There are some minor modifications—like a red X through a blue car, and the fact that the aforementioned tree alteration). That means they’re more recognizable, and at least theoretically, more tapped into the zeitgeist.

On the other hand, out of context, they might tell a different story. Text your friend a panda turning into the grim reaper out of the blue, and he or she may think you’re in serious need of a hug.



Taking a Selfie Can Now Protect the California Coast, Thanks to This Ad Campaign

Selfies, by definition, aren’t selfless. But now, in California, you can do some good for the environment, not just for yourself, by snapping a pic along the coastline.

Gyro San Francisco has created a campaign called “Check the Coast” that encourages people to make a checkmark sign while taking a selfie at the shore, and then include #CheckTheCoast and CheckTheCoast.org when posting it. This is intended to raise awareness of a special box on California tax forms that you can check to make a donation to the California Coastal Commission.

The campaign recruited actor Adrian Grenier (Entourage) and surfer-activist Sunshine in the Fog (yep, that’s her name) to appear in ads for the cause.

“What I like about this campaign is how positive it is,” Gyro executive creative director Steffan Postaer writes on his blog. “Absent are images of the goo-infested birds washing up in the East Bay. Or the scary amount of emaciated sea lion pups beaching themselves near Point Reyes. No tangled fishing lines or plastic rings. No dead fish. That crap is happening and we all know it. Yet, we decided to eschew the appeal of grim reality in favor of a more upbeat approach, one that asked little from its participants: merely a selfie and a buck or two.”



Clothing Retailer's Shopping Bags Turn Inside Out to Become Recycling Mailers

Attention, Swedish shoppers: More Rag Bags are on the way!

For now, check out DDB Stockholm’s case study video for the sustainability campaign, which generated significant media coverage last year, along with a win at the Epica Awards and three nominations at Cannes.

The initiative, for Swedish fashion brand Uniforms for the Dedicated, features biodegradable shopping bags that can be used to ship unwanted garments to charitable organizations. One thousand bags were produced in a pilot program, and consumers could order them free of charge. The bags are twin-sided. When turned inside out, they become slick mailers, labeled with the addresses of individuals’ chosen charities, as well as proper postage.

“I don’t have the exact number of returns [in terms of clothing donations], but we have sold out of the bags,” DDB Stockholm CEO David Sandstrom tells AdFreak, though more will be in production for spring. “We also have a Rag Bag site, where you as a business can sign up for bags. We got interest for 600,000 bags from different companies.”

Unlike some preachy sustainability ventures, Rag Bag scores by embracing consumerism. It creates a realistic framework to nudge folks into making donations, and provides them with a rewarding experience. And a bag. (Until they mail it off with old shirts inside, that is.)

“Our hope is that this will stretch beyond what can be called a campaign,” says Sandstrom. “Wouldn’t it be great if this became a retail standard?”



Plastic Bottles Dream of Thrilling Future Lives in Keep America Beautiful's Recycling Ads

Every plastic bottle in your bathroom dreams of a better life.

At least, they do in Keep America Beautiful’s new recycling ads from Pereira & O’Dell. The next phrase of the “I Want To Be Recycled” campaign launches today, and shows bathroom bottles looking forward to future experiences that are way more fulfilling that getting your grubby body clean.

The two 30-second spots below, created in partnership with The Ad Council and sponsor Unilever, personify products’ dream of being recycled into something new by being told through first-person POVs.

The campaign is based on new research that says that nearly half of Americans (45 percent) aren’t recycling their bathroom products. It also suggests 52 percent of people don’t know which bathroom items can be recycled, and 47 percent don’t have a recycling bin in their bathroom.

The “I Want To Be Recycled” campaign, launched in 2013, has gotten nearly $68 million in donated air time and media space, and ranks as the second most supported Ad Council campaign by network cable TV.



FCB's Giant Eco-Civic Project Would Create a South African Flag Visible From Space

FCB South Africa is running an idea up the flagpole. A really big idea. In fact, the idea is ginormous. And its main component is a South African flag so large, it will be visible from space, 30 miles above the Earth.

The Giant Flag project was put in motion last month by Guy Lieberman, the agency’s head of green and social new business development. The initiative is ultimately designed to foster national pride, improve the lives of people in need and make a lasting impact on South Africa’s economy and environment.

“Yes, it is big. And it is wild,” Lieberman tells AdFreak. “It’s both an unreasonable project—in the good sense of the term—as well as a practical one.”

So, how big and wild are we talking?

The proposed flag will measure 66 hectares—that’s nearly 165 acres, about the size of 66 soccer fields. Its red, green, blue and gold sections will consist of millions of cacti and succulent plants that can thrive in the semi-arid Karoo region, offsetting some 90,000 tons of carbon emissions annually. Solar panels designed to power the equivalent of 4,000 homes will make up the flag’s triangular black patch. (They will also “harvest” rainwater to feed the flag’s living components.) The white areas will be access roads.

The project will provide more than 700 jobs in Camdeboo Municipality, where the unemployment runs over 40 percent, and support tourism, hospitality and various enterprises over the long haul. Moreover, Lieberman says, it will serve as a symbol of hope, cooperation and sustainable growth for South Africa and beyond.

But … where did the whole giant-flag idea come from?

Lieberman drew his inspiration from the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, noting “the nation’s huge emotional response to our flag.” After the World Cup, FCB launched the much-praised “Keep Flying” campaign to encourage the nation to maintain its momentum. “The CEO of FCB South Africa [John Dixon, since succeeded by Brett Morris] called me into his office,” Lieberman recalls, “and said that while the [“Keep Flying”] campaign was amazing, it was fleeting and we needed to look for a legacy project on the flag, something that could live on. And so the Giant Flag idea was born.”

Of course, a 66-hectare flag can’t be built on the cheap. What’s the price tag, and who’s footing the bill?

Crowdfunding and corporate efforts are under way. All told, it will cost about $20 million, with $2 million being the threshold to begin the massive germination project, followed by clearing the land, fencing off the site, building roads and constructing the solar field. “There has been half a million dollars sunk to date,” says Lieberman, “and a variety of commitments, soft to definitive, of around $6.5 million.”

Individuals can donate $10 to sponsor a plant, $100 for a section of road and $250 for a solar panel. What’s more, South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs is lending its support, and corporate sponsors such as Google and Toyota “have come on board because they see the value this will have on the nation, as well as on their brand,” Lieberman says. “It also speaks to their commitment to game-changing initiatives, and in this sense the Giant Flag is not tied to any one nation—it is global.” (Google is providing a monthly $10,000 AdWords grant to promote the project, as well as cloud services for the Giant Flag app.)

In a way, the initiative represents the confluence and expansion of two industry trends—agencies launching intellectual property efforts and creating installations designed to have a broader social impact. Many such projects have succeeded (including FCB’s own fascinating billboards in Peru), but they have been far less ambitious, and staged on a more manageable scale.

So, how does Lieberman respond to critics who say the Giant Flag is a grand idea, and great PR for FCB, that will probably never fly, owing to its cost, complexity and all manner of potential pitfalls?

“I understand why they would say that,” he says. “It’s unlike anything that has come before—there is no easy framework for them to grasp on to. How could they possibly see it happening? But that’s OK. The Giant Flag will happen. … There are too many people who can already feel it in the landscape.”



SunRun Ad Is Delightfully Upbeat, and You Can Be Too If You Use Solar Energy

All the electrical products in your house will start doing Busby Berkeley routines once you sign up with solar power company SunRun.

Cutwater in San Francisco crafted the stop-motion ad below with help from Australian animator Dropbear (aka Jonathan Chong), the creative force behind the music video for Hudson and Troop’s “Against the Grain.” It’s funny that an environmentally friendly company like SunRun would tap an animator who wasted so many pencils (don’t we need pencils?!), but such is life. 

All of the animation was done by hand, and it took the team roughly a month to complete the 30-second spot.

CREDITS
Client: SunRun
Spot: “Solar Motion”
Agency: Cutwater
Founder/ECD: Chuck McBride
Creative Director: Luke Partridge
Executive Producer: Daniel Tuggle
Producer: Danielle Soper
Art Director: Gong Liu
Copywriter: Deidre Lichty
Group Account Director: Christian Navarro
Senior Account Manager: Sarah Owens
Production Company: Hustle Co Director: Jonathan Chong
Director of Photography: Nick Kova
Editorial: Dropbear Digital
Stop-motion animator/Editor: Jonathan Chong
Postproduction Company: Creative Technology
Flame Artist: Zac Dych Colorist: R. Adam Berk
Postproducer: Melanie Bass
Audio Record & Mix: M Squared Audio Engineer: Mark Pitchford Assistant Engineer: Phil Lantz
Music Supervision: Blue Scout Music Music Supervisor: Joey Prather
Music Track: Dragon “Chase the Sun”



'I ? NY' Designer Milton Glaser Tries to Create an Iconic Logo for Climate Change

Is it hot in here, or is it Milton Glaser?

The graphic design legend expresses his concern for climate change in a new awareness campaign ominously tagged, “It’s not warming, it’s dying.”

Glaser, 85, who created the iconic “I ? NY” logo more than 35 years ago, illustrates his global-warning message (see what I did there?) with stark simplicity. The central focus is a green disk representing Earth, its top half dark and lifeless.

The gradient image—brighter toward the bottom—is available in button form, five for $5, with proceeds going to produce more buttons. New Yorkers can check out a large version of the design on an East 23rd Street billboard at the School of Visual Arts. And there’s a Twitter feed, of course.

Discussing the campaign in Dezeen, Glaser explains that “symbolically, the disappearance of light” seemed to sum up the dire situation and provide the perfect design concept. Speaking with WNYC radio, he said, “Either Earth is dying or it’s beginning to grow again. My preference would be that it was beginning to grow again, but for the moment I have no evidence of that.”

Climate-change deniers will scoff at Glaser’s initiative, but I’m thinking any effort to generate debate and stimulate interest in humanity’s survival is a cool idea.



Even If You Hate Greenpeace and Love Lego, You Have to Admire This Gorgeous Attack Ad

Greenpeace takes a page from Chipotle’s marketing playbook—haunting animation plus a distressing cover of a well-known song—in its continuing assault on Lego for partnering with Shell on a set of Shell-branded Lego products.

Attacking a beloved brand like Lego isn’t easy. But if you’re going to do it, you need to do it right. And this spot, showing a Lego version of the Arctic drowning in a sea of oil, is incredibly well made by creative agency Don’t Panic—who, you’ll remember, also did the memorable Save the Children ad which brought the Syrian war to London.

The visuals in the Greenpeace spot are beautiful, and the ethereal cover of “Everything Is Awesome,” from The Lego Movie, is the perfectly ironic backdrop. Yes, it is angering people (check out the YouTube comments if you’re looking for a grand old time), but Greenpeace is rarely interested in making friends as it pursues its enemies.

You can debate whether Lego was right to partner with Shell—here is Greenpeace’s point of view, and here is Lego’s reply to the attack ad. But as a pure PR play, “Everything Is NOT Awesome” (which has topped 1 million views since Tuesday) is itself pretty awesome.



Coca-Cola Has Flower Power in Ogilvy Ads for Its New PlantBottles

Coca-Cola’s orgy of happiness continues with recyclable plastic beverage bottles made partially from plants, touted in cute ads from Ogilvy New York.

The ads are rendered in Coke’s signature colors and design style. One shows a flower and reads, “Plants make us happy. They make us want to smooch, neck and kiss. They also make our bottles.” Yeah, plants are cheap labor, all right.

PlantBottles substitute renewable sugarcane for up to 30 percent of the petroleum used in standard recyclable beverage bottles, which the company says offsets carbon emissions and helps the environment. Makes me feel warm and fizzy all over.

Other recent happy stuff from Coke includes “friendly” bottles that can only be opened by other bottles, caps that turn empties into useful objects and a cooler designed for villages off the power grid. Such promotions have generally received high marks, though there’s been at least one wrong turn for this particular happiness cycle.

More images and credits below. Via Ads of the World.

CREDITS
Client: Coca-Cola
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, New York
Chief Creative Officer: Calle Sjoenell
Executive Creative Director: Corinna Falusi
Design Director: Lucas Camargo
Associate Creative Directors: L Justin Via, Evan Slater, Abe Baginsky, Maite Alburquerque, Emily Clark
Art Directors: Anti-Anti, Lukas Lund, Andreas Hoff, Carl Versfeld
Producer: Jessica Fiore
Account Management: Nicole Pinochet, Andrea Ahrens, Sarah Louie



Coca-Cola Invents 16 Crazy Caps to Turn Empty Bottles Into Useful Objects

Rejoice, happy-go-lucky and environmentally conscious Coca-Cola-lovers. Thanks to this new “2nd Lives” kit from the brand, you can now transform your Coke into something even more delightful.

Is that just an empty soda bottle? Nope, it’s a squirt gun. Useless piece of trash? Nope, it’s a pencil sharpener, or the perfect rattle for your baby. Make your children happy. Give them Coca-Cola, and toys made from Coca-Cola. And if you have two empty Coke bottles, you can even make a dumbbell to burn off some of the calories you gained by guzzling both.

Created with the help of Ogilvy & Mather China, the campaign features a line of 16 innovative caps that can be screwed on to bottles when they’re empty, transforming them into useful objects like water guns, whistles, paint brushes, bubble makers and pencil sharpeners. It’s all part of a clever effort to encourage consumers in Vietnam to recycle, and a rare success at the sort of alchemy that seeks to reincarnate garbage as advertising (even if such attempts are a cornerstone of the marketing industry). Coke will give away 40,000 of these modified caps, which come in 16 different varieties, to start.

It’s not clear if the add-ons themselves are made from recycled material. Even if they are, producing more plastic parts might not be the best way to reduce plastic waste.

But that’s beside the point. While the caps might not quite hit the sharing chord as clearly as the it-takes-two-to-open bottles, they’re a smart bit of advertising. “What if empty Coke bottles were never thrown away?” the campaign asks. Clearly, it would mean people everywhere could finally live in a utopia where everything was made of Coke products.



Beauty Brand's Floating Billboard Cleans a Polluted River by Absorbing Toxins

Japanese natural cosmetics brand Shokubutsu Hana and TBWASMP have floated an unconventional idea in the Philippines to help clean Manila’s grievously polluted Pasig River—an 88-foot-long billboard made of vetiver, a grass that absorbs deadly toxins. Vetiver is often used to treat waste water and landfills, and the billboard can cleanse up to 8,000 gallons a day.

On its website, Shokubutsu Hana says the effort represents the company’s belief in “healthy beauty brought about by the restorative power of nature” and commitment to “provide not only a clean message but also a clean future.” Additional vetiver signs are planned for the ailing waterway, which was declared “biologically dead” in the 1990s after decades of contamination from industrial runoff and sewage. The Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission and Vetiver Farms Philippines are also partners in the project.

A similar concept sprouted in the Philippines three years ago, when Coca-Cola and the World Wildlife Fund created a 60-by-60-foot billboard covered in Fukien tea plants to absorb air pollution.

The notion that social-issues campaign should not just call for action, but also take action themselves or facilitate change, is growing. Recent examples include Peruvian billboards that generate clean air and water, a “Drinkable Book” with pages that filter contaminants and a “Blind Book” designed to teach sighted folks how vision-impaired people feel when denied access to literature because it is not published in a format they can read.

Via PSFK.



Campaign to Plant More Trees in NYC Begins by Tagging Everything That Isn’t One

OK, it's time to play "Tree, Not a Tree."

New York City has so few trees that people there might have forgotten what a tree is, exactly. At least, that's the tongue-in-cheek idea behind the New York Restoration Project's new campaign from ad agency Tierney.

The effort involves tagging objects around the city (especially in low-tree/high-traffic neighborhoods) with labels that read, "Not a Tree." Accompanying text says, "There aren't enough trees in the city. Let's change that," along with the NotATree.org URL.

"Yes, a Tree" tags will go on saplings planted as part of NYRP's MillionTreesNYC project. Text on those reads, "Thank you. This is exactly what our city needs."

The campaign also includes more traditional media, including TV, radio ("That little red thing on the sidewalk that dogs like to tinkle on? Not a tree"), print, billboards and online quiz banners. It runs May through June, which is prime planting season.

The New York Restoration Project, founded by Bette Midler, is recruiting New Yorkers as volunteers for MillionTreesNYC, which hopes to plant 1 million new trees by 2017.

More images and credits below.

CREDITS
Client: New York Restoration Project

Agency: Tierney, Philadelphia
Executive Creative Director: Patrick Hardy
Creative Director, Copywriter: Andrew Cahill
Art Director: Tracy Shinko
Agency Producer: Tom Adjemian
Editor: Aaron Hann
Project Manager: Ben Wollman
Account Director: Rick Radzinski

Postproduction: Shooters, Philadelphia
Producers: Rebecca Lyons, Matthew Licht, Eileen Dare
Colorist: Janet Falcon
Sound Engineers: Bob Schachner, Mike Taylor

Radio: Mister Face, division of Sound Lounge, New York
Executive Producer: Michael Schmidt
Producer: Torria Sheffield
Recording Engineer: Collin Blendell




Honda Creates Bottled Water Brand in Honor of Vehicle That Emits Only Drinkable H2O

The compressed hydrogen-powered Honda FCX runs so clean, its exhaust contains only water—and it's so clean, it's drinkable. To celebrate this, Honda Australia and Leo Burnett Melbourne came up with a memorable stunt—creating a new bottled-water brand, H2O.

As seen in the case study below, the automaker gave the water away in movie theaters around Australia (as free samples, no less) as a way of showing people what they're doing for the environment. There are also plans to make the water available at Honda service stations and dealerships.

Copy on the bottle reads: "Delicious, fresh H2O from a pristine mineral spring, cool mountain glacier or … the exhaust pipe of the Honda FCX. The world's first hydrogen-powered car that emits only water. Water so clean and pure, you could put it in a bottle and drink it. Now isn't that refreshing?"

Note the use of "could." It doesn't appear that this water is actually the by-product of FCX. Still, a neat idea. The product is nicely designed, too, with an effective minimalist aesthetic. I really like how well the Honda logo works as the hydrogen symbol in H20.

Via Popsop.