Antidote

The falling polar bears have upset a lot of people. Thousands of angry YouTube comments, death threats to Plane Stupid, complaints to the ASA, and the usual outrage brigade in the British press:

• The UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom told the Telegraph, “This is a graphic and hysterical advert which will cause unnecessary distress and alarm.”
• Climate change skeptic and “potty peer” Lord Monckton of Brenchley called the ad “a fraudulent piece of scaremongering”.

So far, so good: most climate change stuff slips by unnoticed – at least we don’t have that problem. More interesting, though not entirely unexpected, is the criticism we’ve had from environmentalists. This criticism runs along familiar lines – here are the main themes:

• SHOCK TACTICS DON’T WORK
  Writing on Comment Is Free, Ed Gillespie was one of the first to question the ad. He argues that shock tactics don’t work: “the danger is that by pumping up the high octane drama of an ad, you increase the risk of viewers feeling manipulated and dismissing it as pure propaganda”. This is indeed a real risk – but what’s the alternative? A “medium-octane” ad would be easy to ignore; we needed to make an ad that would get noticed.

  Messages about the damaging impact of flying aren’t new, but UK passenger numbers continue to grow. Many of these flights are unnecessary: Paris is still the top destination from Heathrow, with up to 60 flights each day – despite the obvious Eurostar alternative. Who are these people? What planet have they been living on? They’ve developed immunity to the usual messages about climate change: a more hard-hitting message might just work.

• GUILT IS COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE
  Tom Crumpton of IdentityCampaigning.org suggests that making people feel guilty about flying may be counter-productive, driving them “to deploy other psychological ‘coping mechanisms’, such as projecting their guilt onto others (e.g. the response that: ‘it’s not my fault, when China is building a new coal-fired powerstation every few days…’).”

  This ad doesn’t set out to make people feel guilty. Instead, it sets out to make people feel that unnecessary short-haul flying is socially unacceptable. Drink-driving is now socially unacceptable, thanks to years of government communications – including some pretty shocking executions. Flying from Heathrow to Edinburgh should be no less acceptable – no matter how many coal-fired powerstations there are in China.

  There are 46 million domestic air passengers each year – and these numbers are increasing. Taking a domestic flight is sticking two fingers up at the environment: these are the people our ad is really aimed at. I hope they find it uncomfortable viewing.

• NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNS DON’T WORK
  This really is pretty negative stuff. Many people argue that negative campaigning isn’t helpful: people disengage with climate change unless there’s a positive vision set out: too much stick, not enough carrot. Undoubtedly more work needs to be done to bringing to life a positive vision of the future: see my earlier post on this. But our ad isn’t about positive or negative: it’s about confronting frequent flyers with the consequences of their actions. We’ve made a piece of film that we hope will make them feel differently about jumping on a short-haul flight.

• THE “LUNATIC FRINGE” ARGUMENT
  Plane Stupid are used to drawing criticism for their provocative style of activism: disrupting meetings, breaking into airports, custard throwing. Their actions have been described as irresponsible, childish publicity stunts. The graphic nature of this ad has been similarly criticized: writing on Do The Green Thing, Andy Hobsbawm says that the ad “reinforces [people’s] perceptions of environmentalists on the lunatic fringes raging against the system”.

  Far from being on the lunatic fringe, climate change is mainstream: politicians and brands queue up to pledge allegiance. And yet short-haul air travel continues to grow. Polite approaches aren’t working. That’s why we’re delighted to be supporting Plane Stupid.

One of the surprising things about the criticisms we’ve received is the certainty with which people argue their points, as if there were only one right answer here. Well, I don’t think you can ever be 100% sure that a strategy like this is right, but I’m 100% sure that existing approaches aren’t working: public attitudes are shifting in the wrong direction, and short-haul air travel continues to grow. It’s a difficult brief, but we hope that this disruptive ad will be more effective at getting people to think twice before taking unnecessary flights.