Arnold on ethical marketing

CHRIS ARNOLD

So we had a good laugh, Pigeon media got best read news story of the day and everyone was amused. Except the man from Croydon. He rang up the offices of Creative Orchestra and asked for a media pack. Now you may well think I’m stretching an April Fool too far but this is for real, there really are people out there who are that stupid. So we plan to send him a mock pack. By pigeon of course.

After we did our creative lounge event on the Circle Line we managed to get two complaints. TfL complained we’d bastardised their logo by turning it into a Creative Line logo. CBS media wrote us a nasty letter and claimed we were breaking the law. We did get lots of positive emails from the nice public we met and gave a limited edition badge to. I do love legal departments, they are so detached from the real world and take life far too seriously. Think I’ll send them a little present and a badge by pigeon. I’ve put the Creative Orchestra teams on it.

Many people have asked if Mother sent us a present in response to our fun anti-aging mailer? No. Nothing. Not a thing. Zilch. Come on guys, loosen up, join the fun, address is on the website – www.creativeorchestra.com.

The other question has been are we targeting other agencies. You bet. Unless they get us first. Isn’t it time we put some fun back into the business? I remember when Trevor's lot at TBWA  redecorated the front of our hording at Saatchi (we were redoing our reception) with a slogan, 'if you want real creativity, walk around the corner (or something like that).  Half the board were furious, lawers were called, the other just wanted to play. Whatever happened to that saying “the most fun you can have with your trousers on”? I want everyone to put the fun back – umm, think I’ll set up a Facebook group, Funvertising. Wonder how many ad industry related ones there are? Media Monkeys is one.

So Mrs Smith’s husband has a porn channel, well if you lived in anywhere but England that wouldn’t be news. Just how Victorian are we? Europeans and Scandinavians are so relaxed about sex and porn yet in the UK we seem to be dominated by nun reading Daily Mail moralists. Having worked on many sexual health campaigns over the years it seems as soon as you mention the word condom a bunch of nuns are protesting outside your door. When we put up a poster with CONDOM on (for Femidom) in Birmingham a bunch of mums from the local Catholic school complained that “this poster is disgusting, we’re having to explain to our kids what a condom is.” And we wonder why we have the highest teen pregnancy rate in Europe. Blame the do goody moral right I say. Of course the issue of politicians (all parties) claiming expenses for their family’s back rooms isn’t ethical.

In the US a designer called Benjamin Edgar has launched a water in a tetrapack titled BOXED WATER IS BETTER FOR THE EARTH. His idea is doing the rounds of ethical blogs and is excellent. Of course this is a good idea except that as one blogger points out, tetrapaks, like coffee cups, are impregnated with a plastic to make them waterproof so they don’t rot in landfill. Still a good idea though and nice packaging.

Every year we throw away 400 billion paper coffee cups that sit in landfill for over 100 years! If you visit the Channel 4 Battlefront website you’ll be able to see the campaign Aimee Nathan is doing. She wants us all to take our own cups into Starbucks rather than buy a paper one. Starbucks are the only coffee chain that offers a discount if you bring in your own cup. Another campaigner, Alex Rose, wants to tackle gun and knife crime. His idea was to make a key pedant out of old guns and to get people to wear it as a symbol to reject weapons. Simply brilliant! Check out the others.

As Twitter is the new trend I’ve joined the bandwagon but really can’t do with writing trash like ‘having a cup of coffee…standing at bus stops…looking out of window’. Some Twitters are so dull, why do people read them? So I decided to have some fun and launch ecoSuperMan. eSM has to face the reality of balancing real life (shopping, cleaning, ironing, feeding the cat, doing a job) with being a super hero and being an eco-evangelist. Check it out.