Not as awesome as National Pancake Week or Public-Sleeping Day, but as far as holidays go, Earth Day is a decent holiday. Sure, there are no presents, cakes or even chances to nap in public, but it’s still got its upsides. You get to scold co-workers and guilt family members over the daily eco-terrors they commit, which is pretty cool. Plus, though there’s no cake, sometimes there are cupcakes, complete with green food dye and those weird colored-sugar crystals, so that’s something, right?
Okay, we’ll admit that’s lame, but how about this? With its anti-establishment edge and sanctimonious permissions, Earth Day is a holiday almost begging for aggressive, guerilla-style physical marketing campaigns. Don’t believe me? Check out these 10 Earth Day promotion ideas so fantastic that even a writer with no marketing experience could make them work, I guarantee* it.
*I do not guarantee this. Not even slightly.
10|Provide a client with a few dozen cardboard cutouts of a scowling Al Gore. Help them place the cutouts anywhere they suspect targeted end-users are harming the environment. By trashcans, the company lunchroom, inside their cars or even their homes. For maximum effect, make sure to keep the promotion a secret from the end-users, because nothing says “don’t waste water in the shower” like being surprised by the disapproving grimace of a life-sized Al Gore standing in your bath tub.
9| Take all those BPA-based bottles and recycle them into containers for estrogen-replacement pills. This way, all the hormones the plastics naturally emit will just improve the effectiveness of medicines they contain. It’s helping the environment, people and the poor corporations who have to unload huge stocks of otherwise poisonous material. Kismet anyone?
8| Green-colored organic tees. To match your client’s skin tone to them, tell them a few stories about non-organic cotton harvesting, like how accidental exposure to the pesticides used can give a worker permanent, lifelong asthma.
7| Reusable tote bags. No complicated pitch here, just say this exact phrase to your client: “I couldn’t be selling more of these things if they were full of gold coins that sang your favorite childhood lullaby.” Wait for client’s reaction, then make your favorite “Cha-ching” motion.
6| Globally warmed treats! Make up some delicious chocolate chocolate-chip muffins, serve warm and present in a box that reads, “Unlike these muffins, our planet does not become more delicious when warmed.”
5| Recycle your 2008 and 2009 financial data. Hope they get combined together and form 2010’s numbers, making it an actually bearable year.
4| Set up an educational seminar for young children where they’re presented with a bunch of cute stuffed animals of endangered species. Explain in painstaking detail how many are dead or dying daily, and why.
3| Something involving the eco-button from MMI. No joke here, just a pretty cool product that can save businesses money by cutting back on computer energy spent. Tap the button to send the connected computer into sleep mode.
2| Recycle some jokes to fill a bullet point on a list. Oh, wait, that’s what I’m doing right now …
1| Giant 60″ plasma TVs for everyone, including yourself. As long as you watch Discovery HD once in a while, it counts as green.
