Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection plans to spend more than $300 million over the next three years on a marketing campaign aimed at getting Americans to address climate change. With ads developed by the Martin Agency (the folks behind the Geico cavemen and chatty gecko) and partnerships with grassroots groups, the campaign focus will be on the how-to aspect of cutting greenhouse gases. “Right now, we have incredible numbers of people in the U.S. who say global warming is an important problem that needs to be fixed,” says the Martin Agency’s Mike Hughes. “But most people think there’s nothing they can do about it — or that someone should do something about it, but that someone isn’t them.” Yep, that sounds like most of the people we know. The alliance also hopes to persuade consumer-product manufacturers to use packaging and advertising to “amplify the message” about curbing global warming. Says Alliance CEO Cathy Zoi, “We have to mainstream this. It has to become easy and normal.”
