This summer, Greenpeace created a video showing Ken dumping Barbie (“I don't date girls who are into deforestation”), a mock Twitter feud, photos of Barbie chainsawing logs, and a huge banner on the wall of Mattel’s L.A. headquarters. It was hoping to draw attention to the toy industry’s use of paper from the Indonesian rainforest in its packaging, and it succeeded. The video, photos, and tweets went viral, leading 500,000 people to send emails to Mattel in protest, and the media to report the story extensively.
Now the campaign is being seen as a template for future environmental marketing, and the need to create content that makes people laugh as well as cry. “We saw this campaign propel itself online and in the media in ways that we hadn't seen with other recent campaigns that employed many of the same tricks, if you will,” says Rolf Skar, a campaigner at Greenpeace.
“I think it was the humor. People were much more likely to share this with their friends and family than some downer story about how the earth is falling apart.”Skar says Greenpeace targeted Mattel not because it was necessarily the largest buyer of paper from rainforest sources, but because Mattel refused to respond to the group’s letters, and Ken and Barbie allowed it to “tell a story.”
“Yes, it's about Mattel, but it's also about Asia Pulp & Paper, and it's about anyone else that is buying from them. We picked Mattel because we were surprised to see the toy sector showing up, and because they sell to kids, and this is about the next generation.”read source article
Apple Needs to Make it in America
