“Shell will let the world burn to drill in the Arctic,” says Greenpeace in this new polemic. Sounds a touch over the top but nobody really knows the consequences of such activity, on temperatures for example.
So agency Don’t Panic and British montage artists Kennardphillipps have teamed up to imagine three famous paintings – Pearlblossom Highway by David Hockney, Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth and An Arctic Summer by William Bradford – being put to the torch.
Powerful stuff, whether you agree with it or not.
In this era of ‘creativity for good,’ as instanced in D&AD’s recent award of White Pencils, how would this campaign do, assuming they entered it?
Would its controversial nature and the fact it’s aiming at big corporate battalions count against it? It’s not what you would expect from P&G or Unilever, the pace-setters in the category, after all.
MAA creative scale (we’re bold and fearless): 7.
That’s not as hypothetical a question as you might think, Stephen! The previous film we made for Greenpeace (LEGO: Everything is NOT Awesome) won a D&AD White Pencil just last week. That was also anti-corporate and controversial, so those things certainly don’t count against.
Maybe this one will win too. We shall certainly be entering it next year!