Campaigns
WHY ARE WE RAISING FUNDS?
Demonstrating the cumulative effect of individual actions is a key component of the Face the Future campaign. When one person idles five minutes less per day, it’s not that significant. But when 500 people do, 50 tonnes less CO2 enters the atmosphere – and that IS significant.
Our goal is to raise $150,000 to produce the Face the Future PSA series.
This means we need to sell approx 60,000 vehicle decals (based on an average profit of $2.50 per decal). This also means (hopefully!) that there will be a minimum of 60,000 motorists idling their vehicles five minutes less per day.
Since one vehicle idling five minutes less per day = .10 tonnes/year less CO2 entering the atmosphere, then 60,000 motorists translates to 6000 less tonnes of CO2 entering the atmosphere each year!
So we’re not just selling vehicle decals to raise funds to produce the PSAs, we’re also selling a product that educates motorists about the anti-idling message. Cool huh?
Snapshot
By 2050, polar bears will likely be extinct in Canada’s Southern Hudson Bay. But really, what can I – the average person – do about this? Face the Future, an upcoming environmental public awareness campaign comprised of five 30-second public service announcements shown on TV, the Internet, cell phones, etc., answers this question by demonstrating ways individuals can affect positive change.
Purpose
The purpose of this campaign is to increase people’s awareness about the global impact of their everyday activities, while inviting them to be part of the solution by making simple changes in their own lives. By describing the cumulative effect of seemingly harmless individual actions, the message behind the campaign is a call to consumers to face the future by thinking globally and acting locally. Because if we don’t face the future, who will?
Creative Concept
The Face the Future PSA series will be an entertaining and fast-paced futuristic game show. A charismatic quizmaster will ask the audience questions about shocking environmental statistics. For example, the question in the first PSA is about the length of time left before polar bears likely become extinct in Southern Hudson Bay. Despite the answer being only 40 years, when a female teenage contestant answers correctly, the audience goes wild with excitement. The crowd is so caught up in the game of right and wrong, they fail to comprehend the seriousness of the issue, let alone deal with it – a metaphor for much of the public and private response to global warming thus far.
Three different endings to this PSA give the viewer three simple calls to action: reduce vehicle idling, use energy efficient light bulbs, and compost food waste. The global impacts of these small lifestyle changes will also be explained. For example, if every Canadian motorist idled just five minutes less per day, more than 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 would not enter the atmosphere in a year.
The remaining two PSAs address the use of plastic shopping bags (Canadians take home 55 million plastic shopping bags per week; 60,000 plastic bags are used in the U.S. every five seconds) and disposable beverage cups. The call to action on these issues is obvious: use re-usable shopping bags and re-usable mugs. Again, both are simple lifestyle changes that, when implemented by millions of consumers, do have significant global effects.
