Everybody is contributing his share to global warming, but at the same time it is up to everybody to do something against it. As an independent environmental activist, Greenpeace does not have the financial means to launch a cross-medial global campaign to create awareness for this matter. Thus we were briefed to create a campaign which generates as much awareness as possible for the topic “CO2, the climate killer” by using only a very limited budget.

Instead of launching an online-campaign, we decided to bring our message right to the people’s computers. We developed a free screensaver which, as soon as it’s activated, displays a very familiar picture: tropical fish swimming in the ocean. When the user returns to his computer after a few minutes, a completely different sight awaits him: All life is gone, because after three minutes, everything in the ocean dies automatically. Our message floats on top of the screen: “Turning off your computer saves a lot more than just energy.“ By doing so, we managed to turn the medium itself into the message.

The screensaver and our message spread immediately. It was downloaded more than twenty thousand times and, of course, was forwarded via E-mail to even more people. In addition, Greenpeace members and public schools received the screensaver via e-mail. Not only in Austria. Already, Greenpeace has received and fulfilled request from offices across eastern and western Europe to have the screensaver adapted into their own languages.