This recent campaign by Wildaid is pretty interesting; I’d venture to say most wildlife protection advertising is great; as their primary focus is to shock the crap out of you to get you to change your point of view. In this particular campaign seen in China’s subways; Wildaid shoots endangered animal posters with money, through the billboards glass. The end result is a billboard with a bullet hole; the center of which features a coin.
The intended communication? Each time you buy even a coin’s worth of endangered species produced product, you’re pretty much shooting the animal; sometimes on the torso, but in the case of elephants, in the face. Though difficult to see the actual copy (at first you’d almost think it was a Discovery Channel ad with animals leaping out of the billboards toward you) once the message is absorbed it has impact; and execution-wise it’ll catch your eye.
However, one must wonder of the effect on highly-trafficked China subways; will enough people, rushing from point A to point B stop to get the sense of the communication? Or will they simply tune into the Discovery Channel thinking to catch the new “3D animal show”?
Kinda hard to feel bad when the killer shark is shot by the underwater sniper.
That's one happy fish.
Ouch.
–
The actual glass in front of these posters was fractured as though a bullet had been shot through it. In the bullet hole is a coin suggesting that if you spend a cent on the illegal trade of endangered animals you may as well pull the trigger yourself.
Advertising Agency: JWT Shanghai, China
Executive Creative Directors: SheungYan Lo, Yang Yeo
Creative Directors: Grace Liu, Roy Yeo, Cecilia Zhu
Art Directors: Daisy Zeng, David Mo
Copywriter: Jun Qian
Digital Imaging: Xin He Imaging
Related articles from around the web.
- ‘Let Pandas Die Out’, Says Wildlife Expert (news.sky.com)
- ‘Pet’ Siberian Tiger Mauls Owner To Death (news.sky.com)
- Asia’s greed for ivory puts African elephant at risk (guardian.co.uk)
- The Namibian conservation safari that keeps both animals and tourists happy (guardian.co.uk)
- List of 10 Countries with The Greatest Number of Endangered Species (simplygreen.co.za)
- Mapping out state wildlife just got easier (timesunion.com)
- Wildaid: Shark, Bear, Elephant (ibelieveinadv.com)
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
It is a great campaign. However, it is likely to be misunderstood as accidentally broken glass, as people rarely stand in front of the ad enough time to notice details. The message will definetely come accross if two of those posters are put next to one another. ( your brain can be fooled once, but not twice. )
I am not sure about the impact it will have in concrete terms though.
Exactly right; I think its great as well, but likely better if you saw it in a magazine so you could read the subtext (of course you’d lose the visceral broken glass element, but could still mimic it on page). As it is, I think out of 100 people who saw the ad, maybe 20 would stop to read it closely enough to get the message burned in.
But on the flip side, those 20 may have been better impacted by this communication then the hundred who saw a “ho-hum” inside-the-box communication.