The family run organization Less Plastic UK has made a twist to the seriousness of plastic littering. Literally.
Although being dead serious, Amanda Keetley from Devon, Great Britain, has made her environmental focus stand out by being playful. Other organizations might have made you feel bad or even bored by constantly focusing on guilt, the negative impact, the harm done. By actually using plastic to illustrate sea creatures and humans, the Keetley crew has truly turned some heads with creative differentiation.
These unique ads also play on words, mental images and phrases such as “drowning in plastic” and “a wave of plastic”. In addition, the image looking like the Scottish sea monster should probably even have a special, local appeal to the Brits.
A big heads up to Keetley and her family, but dosen’t a lot of marketing literature warn against the dangers of playing on humor?
In “A meta-analysis of humor in advertising” Martha Eisend found that playing on humor positively affects attention, but also reduces source credibility. In other words, it might not be so strong in the long run. Then again, one might argue that the time it takes for plastic to decompose or break down has us in the long run anyways. Grabbing people’s attention when we’re drowned in anti-plastic messages is hard.
Less Plastic UK has already made quite the achievement, and being a family made non-profit surely fights off many credibility issues.
I would say it´s nearly plastic fantastic.
See Less Plastic UK’s Instagram page here
This text is refers to the following research paper:
Eisend, M. (2009). A meta-analysis of humor in
advertising, Journal of the Academy of Marketing
Science, 37, 191-203.
