Climate change and political activism are combined in Big Ask’s Sticky Question campaign. A cleaning woman pushes her trolley down a hotel corridor. In room 69 a dominatrix has her client tied to the bed with a piece of fruit in his mouth. He’s lying there in his underwear and socks. She walks on to the bed, leather (or is it vinyl?) boots squeaking, brandishing a red whip saying, “You’ve made Mistress very very angry! You know what Mistress does. She has to punish you.” As the cleaner walks into the room she hears the woman saying, “You’re a bad bad boy!”
The cleaner looks at the dominatrix and then looks at the man on the bed. She recognises him as her local member of Parliament. She waves her feather duster and asks the Big Questions. “Why haven’t you done more about climate change? Emissions are going up, and up, and up. You better act now, young man, while you still have enough time to do something about it.” She throws the linen onto the bed, looks at the dominatrix and MP in disgust, and storms out of the room. We’re given the super: “Ask your MP direct about climate change… by going to www.thebigask.com”, with logos for Friends of the Earth and The Big Ask.
The Big Ask campaign, which was launched by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke in 2005, is calling on people across the UK to demand the Government take action to tackle climate change. Friends of the Earth is calling for the introduction of new climate change laws which would force the Government to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, by 3 per cent every year.
Credits
‘Sticky Question’ was created by CHI & Partners with Friends of the Earth.
Filming was shot by director Peter Lydon via Hungry Man.
Rachel Skerry, from Friends of the Earth, said, “The ad was released on Thursday 26th January. So far we haven’t received any complaints about the content. The feedback has also been very good from MPs who have seen it.”
‘Sticky Question’ hasn’t been shown on TV or in the cinema. However, FOE has also made a cinema ad which has been showing at 60 independent cinemas across the UK for the past six months. Here’s a link to the cinema ad: The Big Ask cinema ad.
More information on the UK ‘Big Ask’ campaign can be found at Friends of the Earth.
Thom Yorke Interview
Thom Yorke is interviewed on BBC. Intelligent but not overly eloquent.
Click on the image below to play the video.
Hey Duncan, I’ve been a fan of this blog for a while now. We’ve got similar taste in the ads we like. I also write a blog about advertising, but from an agency perspective (I am a writer at Creative Wonders in Vancouver, Canada) I focus mainly on sustainability, ethical and environmental issues however. You can see some of the ads I have posted at http://www.creativewondersblog.blogspot.com.
I like the ad, FOE is doing some great work. I’d like to see ads aimed at creating activists, saying “hey you, yeah you watching this ad. You might be one of the 90% percent of people concerned about global warming but what are YOU actually doing about it? stop whinging, get up off the couch and join an environmental group. By volunteering only one hour of your week to the cause you’d actually be helping to solve this crisis. (fade in the phone number of an activist info line) and the info line would supply contact details of all activst groups around the caller’s area. That’s how you start a revolution