Agency creatives come together to advocate for nature
Talent drafted in from UK agencies have created five campaigns that seek to put a different spin on environmental communications through the language of gaming, fashion, eroticism and more
With studies indicating that many people in Britain don’t feel connected to nature, two non-profits – Purpose Disruptors and Glimpse (known for its headline-grabbing campaigns for charities) – have launched a ‘pop up agency’ to encourage people to interact with the great outdoors.
Creative teams from five UK agencies – Wieden+Kennedy, The&Partnership, Oliver, Amplify and Leo Burnett – have been brought together to help Agency for Nature achieve its purpose. Each duo has produced a campaign responding to a brief that challenged them to create “hype for a nature-connected lifestyle”. The campaigns will be rolled out across social media, billboards and digital touchpoints.
Wieden+Kennedy’s Aleks Atanasovski and Hannah Young seized on gaming for inspiration, with a campaign offering free seeds that allow people to grow plants found in real games, beginning with Guild Wars 2. Lisa Aoyama and Caterina Neves at Amplify also opted for an interactive exercise with The Slow Brew, which involves creating an adventure trail for city dwellers that leads them to a local community garden.
Jas Nandoo and Geo Fischer from Leo Burnett chose to channel the language of fashion campaigns in a set of still ads that similarly advocate for a slower pace of life, going against the grain of ‘hustle culture’ and ‘girlbossing’, they explain. Meanwhile Mark Betteridge and Susie Cornelius from Oliver created a billboard campaign that highlights nature’s “transformative” potential.
Finally, Sam Collins and Ivan Stanojevic from The&Partnership designed an erotic pocket guide called The Ecokamasutra, which invites people to get closer to nature by drawing on “humanity’s oldest, most ubiquitous tool for fostering intimate connection – sex”.
The idea behind the campaign seems to build directly on a message that Purpose Disruptors sought to get across in a somewhat divisive spot which ran on Channel 4 last year, where it aimed to expose the wrongdoings of advertising before suggesting people “go out and spend more time in nature”.
