Tuesday 24 April 2007

askingforit

The book is mostly about fresh green alternatives. But there is another whole green marketing debate to be had about curbing irresponsible marketing. So I thought I'd start an occasional series called 'Asking for it' where brands promoting unsustainable lifestyles are highlighted and we can speculate about how this might come to bite them.

Here's a starter; Lastminute.com advising people to get their '5 breaks a year' (by analogy with 5 fruit and veg). If everyone does take 5 breaks a year - mostly using Easyjet and similar - we will be even more f*cked. I bet we soon see an activist response along the lines of






They were asking for it :J

Another is the idea I put in the recent drinks innovation article (at www.brandtarot.com/blog), asking whether local drink will soon put an end to 'wine from new zealand' being drunk here. English wine is pretty good these days, ditto the beer. Wines miles? Asking for it.

Now you've clocked the format - spotting negative trends (ie things that cant continue) - do feel free to submit your own askingforit suggestions.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

John,

I think that the Chevy Tahoe campaign, launched just over a year ago, is a classic example of this.

In short, they launched a snazzy new 'consumer generated content' website, where Chevy invited people to create their own ads to promote the new gas-guzzler. And, you guessed it, it backfired.

Chevy were forced to shut the site down, after greenies and culture jammers created a plethora of anti-ads that slammed the new Tahoe as being an environmental disaster. News of the campaign received plenty of buzz around the green blogosphere, and eventually made it to the mainstream media, including the New York Times.

(Shameless plug: Here's a post that I wrote about it on my blog at the time.)

This is a terrific blog John - can't wait to read the book.