We co created #ChangeSomething calling the creative industry to take action
Together with a network of 30 creative agencies from across the world we launched a campaign called ‘Change Something, Change Everything to remind others in their sector of their responsibility for addressing the twin global crisis of mass extinction and the climate heating.
The campaign has been created and launched by a Latin American group of design and marketing agencies called ATI and a partner group drawn from across Europe called DNS.
The joint DNS/ATI campaign ‘Change Something, Change Everything’ is launching their complete website as well as their ‘Call2Action’ on 26 July 2021. This campaign has been designed to inspire more agencies and creatives to act around two major global conventions in 2021: COP15 on biodiversity in Beijing and COP26 in Glasgow and Milan, focused on the global response to the climate crisis.
The network agencies will give the campaign an individually tailored appearance focusing on local audiences in every participating country. You can find a toolkit on the campaign website, with elaborated SocialMedia posts, press releases and other campaign raw material, ready to use for your individual campaign in your country.
The ‘Change Something, Change Everything’ website will be the base for a global departure of the world’s communicators to change the stories they are telling about products, ideas and companies. The ‘new storyline’ will be about consuming less and different, about changing the supply chain, reducing resource input, featuring circular economy and energy efficient and nature-based solutions.
In addition, the network is issuing a tougher challenge – calling on agencies to ‘stop selling carbon’ and immediately drop any accounts which promote the use of fossil fuels.
Marian Ventura, a co-founder of ATI in Latin America and director of the agency done! in Buenos Aires said: “For decades, the advertising and media industry has written the stories that furnished our homes, filled our cabinets, shaped our bodies and nurtured our desire.
This story, based on the illusion of comfort and perpetual replacement, fueled our planet to the limit of collapsing. Today, humankind and life on the whole planet stand on the verge of extinction. So, this call2action is an emergency call. Time for a change is running short. Therefore we invite every agency in the world to join our movement for a change in communication. Change the story, now!”
Steve Connor, one of the co-founders of the European network, DNS, and director of the Manchester-based agency Creative Concern said “The advertising and media industry has always been working for the growth of the economies. Producing more and on an ever-growing scale, more complicated, and more expensive products and services. Companies build in obsolescence in their products in order to speed up the faster and faster turning product circle. The more people consume, the better their lives, so the empty promises. Growth for growth’s sake is the logic of a cancer cell. Destruction instead of construction, death instead of life, waste instead of sustainability. The creative industries worldwide have a responsibility to change that logic, and that’s why our global alliance of agencies dedicated to sustainability has come together to launch this campaign.”
Change Something, Change Everything is getting spread with the hashtag #ChangeSomething, and includes a website changesomething.net where agencies around the world can join a global alliance and learn more about how to focus their practices to contribute to climate action. Learn more about the initiative and the agencies that are promoting the campaign.
