Can Don Draper Save The Planet?

There have been memorable social marketing campaigns over the years–Smokey the Bear, the sizzling egg that is your brain on drugs and the coining of “Obamacare” come to mind. Now Grist reports that Martin Glaser, the advertising genius that came up with the “I Heart New York” logo, has turned his communications brilliance to Climate Change.

As I said in my earlier post on the importance of communications to public policy, Madison-avenue style marketing should not be reserved for toothpaste and cell phone plans. Policy, like anything else, needs to be sold to the public in order to be accepted and effective.

The slogan is “It’s not warming.  It’s dying.” You can see the campaign here.  I like the slogan, it captures the urgency.  But more than the slogan, I like the graphic of a green circle being overcome by a black shadow.  I think it is quite effective.

If Madison Avenue can get Americans to believe that 4 out of 5 dentists agree that sugar free gum is good for you, then hopefully Martin Glaser can improve Yale’s survey finding that “only one in three Americans thinks people in the U.S. are being harmed “right now” by global warming in the United States.”