Can this ‘pop-up creative agency’ reinvigorate the ad industry’s passion for planet?

It’s the second outing for this ‘pop-up creative agency,’ first launched by ad activist organization Purpose Disruptors last year. The idea is as simple as it is novel: gather junior creatives from five top ad shops (this cohort: AMV BBDO, Iris, VCCP, Droga5, and House 337) for a three-month part-time secondment in service of “the most important client on Earth,” nature itself.

The brief is as ambitious as it is wide open: to help young people in urban areas to (re)discover a relationship with the natural world. On that score, the data are not good. In October, Anglia Ruskin University reported that “UK adults experience less of a connection with nature than adults from most other countries,” ranking 59th in 65 countries surveyed. And research from YouGov and the Agency for Nature itself found that people in the 18-34 age bracket score lowest for feeling “connected to nature” (just 42%).

The creative pairs’ work begins today, ready for launch on Valentine’s Day next year, with media commitments secured from OOH giant JCDecaux, support from Meta and a production partner on board in the form of Locate Productions.

‘What’s the catch?’

In a rare set-up for the ad industry, the project is funded by philanthropic donations, leaving the creatives with a wide-open field. As one of this year’s participants, VVCP’s James Ginn, told The Drum, “It’s almost like a university brief – but with a lot of budget behind it.”

Ginn’s creative partner Jake Wiseman agrees: “It’s not going to feel like doing our job.”

Last year’s output – which the agency says achieved a combined reach of over 10 million people – is indicative of this openness. One creative team published a book of pseudo-steamy nature-relationship advice, the Ecokamasutra. Another created an in-game nature walk in role-playing game Guild Wars 2.

A third rode the wave of the 2023 ‘lazy girl jobs’ trend with a series of billboards lampooning soft-focus fashion ads with the tagline ‘Girls Just Wanna Grow Plants.’ Leo Burnett’s Jas Nandoo, who created the campaign alongside creative partner Geo Fischer, remembers the joy of an open brief: “We were like, ‘What’s the catch?’ What we liked most about it is that campaigns about nature can tend to be quite negative. It tends to be like, ‘The world’s ending! Do something now!’ Everyone’s tired of all the awfulness. But this could just be about getting people to tap into nature; experience it.”

‘We need to change the story of advertising’

The project’s goal is twofold: the brief’s stated aim of moving the needle on feelings of connection with nature through creative comms, but also, as Lisa Merrick-Lawless of Purpose Disruptors puts it, “wanting to inspire a new generation of creatives.”

In an industry that’s shown itself over the last few years to be as easily swayed as ever by the shiny new thing (most recently the metaverse and now AI), Merrick-Lawless says this comes down to making a lasting change to how we think about the industry’s relationship with consumption. “What’s needed is to change the story of advertising. We work in an industry that’s all about creativity and storytelling, yet we’re stuck in this old paradigm that says advertising can only do one thing: to drive consumption and drive growth. That’s just not what we believe to be true.”

Merrick-Lawless would like to seed a different story – “a different kind of future in which advertising works in harmony with the natural world.” Helping a generation of creatives to imagine their own futures for the industry is a part of that endeavor – an endeavor that commits to changing the ad industry from the inside.

“I talk to a lot of people who work in the climate space ask me, ‘Why are you still working with the advertising industry?’ But I can say, hand on heart, I believe that this industry has superpowers that others don’t, in creating desire, problem-solving, strategic thinking, et cetera. Those things are exactly what’s needed. So that’s what we're trying to do on a broader level, to bring those superpowers and skills to these problems of disconnection with nature”.