Useless Green Marketing Stunt of the Week.

(click image) It's actually left over from my noteworthy Cannes 2010 advertising festival winners collection. It's a street tree canvas created for the China Environmental Protection Foundation by DDB China. Here's how it worked: the canvas was placed in pedestrian crossings in Shanghai. (My guess, knowing how these fancy ad award-grab efforts work? It was placed in exactly one crossing.) On both sides of the crossing were sponge cushions soaked with washable green paint. Pedestrians—knowingly and unknowingly—stepped on the sponges and subsequently turned the barren tree into a leafy environmental statement. This won a gold design lion and soiled many a pair of shoes. (Wonder if any dawdling walkers were killed?) Considering how China has just recently fallen fast in love with automobiles, this feels more like an ironic art project to me.
Previously in: stupid Green Marketing.

In Green marketing effort, Iberia airlines invites us to play "where's Waldo?" with its planes.

(click ads, via) Ah, the wonderful unnatural magic of Photoshop. "Nobody invests more on going unnoticed," reads the translated (from Spanish) headlines on these hubristic ads from an atmosphere polluter. Nobody? How 'bout hermits? Campaign by Madrid agency Tapsa. Here's a roundup of other amazingly bad examples of Green Marketing. And here's four recent arrogant private jet ads.

LEVI's Green Jeans ads: beautiful/depressing.

(click ads for closer look)
Did you see that Super Bowl XLII MVP Eli Manning won a Cadillac Escalade hybrid? YEAH, that there's a save-the-fucking-planet vehicle, alrighty. I've had my fill of absolute bullshit Green products, how 'bout you? No? Have you seen the Green vodka? Eco-marketing may be the slimiest movement ever to come down the scummy promotional pike (at least since the RED one).
So, on to the above campaign for Levi's Eco-jeans out of BBH Singapore. They're jeans made from 100% "organic" cotton. That's nice. My first impression of these ads—other than that they were beautifully designed—was that they offered a vision of our not-to-distant future: all of us humans dead and gone with weeds growing through our trendy, not-yet-disintegrated eco-clothing. Hey, let's hope dreamy Adrian Grenier will be wearing Eco-jeans (and sexy Green underwear) in his earth-saving TV series The Green Life. Every little bit helps. barely related: the original Mr. Green Jeans from the Captain Kangaroo TV show.

bottled water company lectures me on plastic bags.

(click ad to read copy)
The last line of copy: "Jana gives every employee a reusable tote bag for their personal shopping." How fucking green of you, Jana. You know what would really help the environment? If you gave every employee a fucking pink slip and shut down your useless fucking company, you shameless fucks. Then, we wouldn't have to read your stupid fucking ads with fucking flip comments about Flipper. Fuck you, Jana. (see a second Jana ad lecturing us about magazine recycling here) previously in bullshit green marketing: Levi's 100% Organic Eco-Jeans; the world's first eco-friendly vodka; 2(x)ist green underwear, increase your carbon cockprint.

Ironic Earth Day Marketing: A Recap.

To honor the 40th anniversary of earthlings celebrating destroying the Earth, here's a roundup of recent eco-stupid Green Marketing ads/promos (image via):
• Toyota SUV ads printed on banana leaf.
• bp's cutesy-wootsey alternativenergy™ logo.
• Bottled water company lectures me on plastic bags.
• To read World Water Day promo, you had to waste water.
• You wouldn't be stupid enough to make treehuggers out of cardboard.

Dying polar bear travels thousands of miles to thank man for buying an electric Nissan.

(via) What an absolutely outrageously manipulative insensitive hubristic piece of Green advertising bullshit. From a fucking car company! A car company who's (non-electric) cars are helping to destroy the bear's ice pack! Ah-HAHAHAHAHA!!! You dicks. By TBWA\Chiat\Day LA.
Previously in: bullshit Green Marketing.
Previously in: terrible Nissan ads.

It's the "Greenest" billboard ever!

(click image, via) The World Wildlife Fund and Coke (what?) have teamed up in the Philippines to erect the most eco-tastic billboard on the face on the earth. It's made of 3,600 Fukien tea plants, which apparently absorb pollution? In fact, Anthony Gao, a botanist who worked with Coca-Cola and the WWF, said each plant could absorb up to 13 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, on average. The plant pots are even made of recycled Coke products. The plants are watered with a drip irrigation system for efficient distribution. I'd be getting goosebumps if it wasn't for global warming. Previously: dying polar bear travels thousands of miles to thank man for buying a Nissan Leaf. Related: five instances of tragically ironic green marketing. And the worst Green ad award goes to: Iberia airlines.

Save the world. Destroy your liver.

(puke) Green Marketing: Vodka 360, "the world's first eco-friendly vodka." Not to be confused with the planet-destroying 360 Vodka, "the world's first diamond-filtrated vodka."
According to an ugly-on-the-eyes print ad in last week's Time Out New York "Green" issue, Vodka 360's bottle is made from 85% recycled glass while its label is made with 100% post-consumer waste paper. Its tagline is: The Evolution of Vodka™.
The ad also states that the vodka is distilled four times and filtered five times, and that it is "distilled more energy efficiently."
Bypassing the obvious question—'You pathetic cause exploiters are fucking kidding, right?'—I have a secondary question: wouldn't it actually be, eh, more energy efficient to only distill and filter your eco-hooch, say, three times?
previously in Vodka:
1. V2. Get Bombed.
2. Let's get EFFEN drunk.
3. Staten Island needs to be distilled, like, five times by itself.
4. ABSOLUT KRAP.
5. XTRA! XTRA! Another Vodka Xactly What World Needs!
related on Gawker: Vodka Ad Wars.

Comedy Central's blue Green German ad.

(click ad) Hündchen-style humor via ad agency Kemper Trautmann in Hamburg, Germany. Not likely to be seen in The US anytime soon. Like I've said, those dirty Deutschlanders really seem obsessed with bestiality. (image via) Previously in Green Marketing.

Ironic "Green" ad tchotchke of the week.

(click image) Via Israel, for Greenpeace, it's chopped down tree car air fresheners, which were in fact scent-free. They were handed out to motorists "to encourage a family talk inside the car about the issue" of rainforest deforestation. That would be a short conversation inside the idiot-filled autos of America. The hanging in your face irony of course is that cars kill trees. Maybe have that family talk sitting in the car in the garage. It's the thought that counts, etc. By Tel Aviv agency ACW Grey.
Previous ironic green marketing efforts.
Previous Greenpeace ads/promos.

Gary Numan scolded by Scottish Father Earth.

In a new TV spot for the Scottish government's Go Greener initiative, the English electric music pioneer again slathers on the heavy eye makeup to parody his performance from his classic video for "Cars." Good for you Gary, I love it! Because "...nothing seems right...in cars." (via) Previously in bad Green marketing: Tragically ironic. Even more tragically ironic. Pathetic. Even more pathetic. Porny. Beautiful but depressing. Evil.

Tree abuse in the name of Earth Hour.

(click images) Both instances were committed in Sydney, Australia. (L) It's a tree-shirt! Poor, ridiculous-looking majestic tree. By Leo Burnett. (R) Cardboard treehuggers! How cringe-worthy. And what an egregious waste of cardboard. By ad agency US Sydney. Did you do anything special for Earth Hour? I shut off one light, but not the TV. Sorry, Canadiens were playing. (images via)
previously in: bad green marketing.

copyranter on ANIMAL NY: an ad printed on banana leaf.

It's for a non-hybrid Toyota SUV. Green marketing goes Gonzo. Next up, an oil company will print an ad on pure sunshine. (link)

How they did "Green" car marketing in the 1960s.

(click ad) No lazy Photoshopping here. No, Doyle Dane Bernbach got out an actual can of paint to make their economical point. My best friend has a V-Dub van custom-painted orange and brown in honor of the Cleveland Browns. It's fucking hideous, but I love it. If you hate the old VW van, then I believe you hate life itself (ad via). Previous classic DDB VW ad: It's ugly, but it gets you there.

Goldman Sachs's new ad blows sunshine up America's ass.

(click ad, via) The government bailed-out, 401k-destroying, woman-hating, investor defrauders are rolling out a brand new shiny image-polishing ad campaign starting with this little piece of feel-goodness running in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.
You got your wind farm and your Mr. just-hired Hardhat and, gee-willikers, maybe these economy-destroying mega-rich pricks do have a heart of gold. Says GS spokesman David Wells:
"We're expanding our communication to a broader audience in an effort to promote a better understanding of who we are and what we do."
Well, David, thanks to a little more transparency than you cocksuckers are accustomed to, we already have a very keen understanding of who you are (criminals) and what you do (ruin lives). You wanna help repair your image? Here's what your ad should have been: a big fucking coupon giving every American $1,000 or so.
Campaign by Y&R NYC, paid for by you, the fucked-over American taxpayer. Maybe they can pool their ad dollars with bp, and run some co-op Green energy ads? The bp-ers are really struggling with their marketing messaging too.

Oil companies love them some Earth, Wind & Fire.

Oil companies really, really want to cut energy consumption and reduce emissions. I totally believe them. Shutup. I do. You know why? Because they've spent millions upon millions on the marketing of their alternative fuel initiatives. bp has its alternativenergy™ (note the shared "e"). Shell has its Energise™. ExxonMobil has its, uh, Global Energy Management System (GEMS), no trademark that I can find (it is a bit clunky). See, you Green Meanies? They care. Look at all the thought and work that went into that pretty bp artwork. And soon, very soon, before it's too late, maybe, they'll get around to spending some very real money on the actual initiatives.

previously:
1. bp. Beyond Poopycock.
2. A $36.13 Billion Dollar Smile.