As you may have heard, Australia is in the midst of a bushfire crisis, the kind of event that makes the everyday of the advertising world seem unimportant by comparison. That doesn’t mean, however, that creatives aren’t doing their part to help.
As Mumbrella reported, TBWA Melbourne CEO Kimberlee Wells and incoming IPG Mediabrands CEO Mark Coad spearheaded an effort to raise money for Gippsland Emergency Relief Fund featuring an ad with voiceover from Australian actor Eric Bana. Ogilvy and Wavemaker also created pollution masks called Smoggys, which they’re selling and donating profits to Rural Fire Service, as LBB alluded to.
Another campaign included in LBB’s roundup, “Tomorrow’s On Fire,” is more insistent and angry in its address to viewers, calling out the country’s politicians, as well as the fossil fuel industry, for their inaction and perceived culpability in the environmental catastrophe.
Created by animator/director Darcy Prendergast, part of creative collective Oh Yeah Wow, the insistent tone of the animated short grabs viewer attention with its righteous anger. “I’m angered, incensed, enraged and fed up with you lazy, ignorant fossil fuel chumps,” begins a voiceover read by a child narrator credited as Miles M, allowing the voice of a generation which inherited the climate crisis to speak the lines.
The lines sets the tone for the rest of the spot, which also targets “deaf politicians” and those peddling “misinformation while our backyards burn.”
Accompanying the arresting message is powerful minimalist animation in stark color patterns. It concludes with a call to action with the line, “Tomorrow’s on fire and the sky it bleeds crimson, so it’s about time we made our tax dollars listen,” followed by the sound of a beeping microwave. According to LBB, Oh Yeah Wow have requested that viewers make donations to Wildlife Victoria, an organization which provides wildlife emergency response.