Cannes Lions

CAR FREE DAY 2009

GREY HONG KONG, Hong Kong / GREENPEACE / 2010

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Overview

Description

Cars pump over 3,000 tons of carbon dioxide every day. Greenpeace wanted to persuade Hong Kong’s 380,000 drivers to stop polluting.We used a cell phone to film a family in a public car park connecting their car exhaust to a tube which led into their car & committing suicide. The film ran with no messages & no logos. After a week, we reposted this video with a message: “Cars pump 3,000 tons of carbon dioxide every day. Keep driving, who will suffer? Support Car Free Day.”Within 24 hours, over 20,000 people had watched and talked about the film. Police got involved and it was immediately taken off. All public sector including HK Chief Executive, Donald Tsang, voiced their support.

Execution

At first, we put this video on Youtube. The film ran with no messages and no logos. It was then appeared on other forums, blogs and other video portals.Thousands of responses were spotted on Youtube and other forum. We posted threads on forums and made it as contagious as possible. After 24 hours, it was in local newspapers. The news attracted even more people to watch it. Ultimately this attracted the interest of the Hong Kong Police. Police emailed us as they worried if it was a real case. This unplanned thing drew us to remove the video.Interestingly the videos were reposted in local video portals and forums by other web citizens shortly after we pulled it out.After a week, we reposted it, with a message: “Cars pump 3,000 tons of carbon dioxide every day. Keep driving, who will suffer? Support Car Free Day.”

Outcome

Within 24 hours, over 20,000 people had watched and talked about the film. After 24 hours it appeared in local newspapers. Police got involved. It automatically became a sensitive topic.As soon as the police got involved it was immediately taken off. Then it was found again in at least 10 forums, other video portals and blogs.After a week we posted the video with our message. After this, all public sectors including HK Chief Executive, Donald Tsang, voiced their support.

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