The Air that Cools your Home Heats Up the World

The outdoor clothier outfit Columbia teamed up with Prolam Y&R to decorate the façade of a newly refurbished building in Santiago, Chile, with the image above.  Translated into English, the headline reads “The air that cools your home heats up the world.” Columbia belongs to the Conservation Alliance, whose website describes their corporate tag-team as “a group of specialty outdoor businesses that has become a powerful source of grass roots conservation and environmental funding.”

While the ad is incisive, I’m skeptical about Columbia’s motives, and concerned that the Conservation Alliance is greenwashing Columbia’s dirty laundry.  I am a fan of ambient campaigns that directly link a social problem with their source, which this ad does explicitly, but my concern over ad creep trumps any lauding I would do about the placement of the ad.  The billboard covers the windows of private homes, and would likely be illegal where I live in the United States.

Is the billboard successful, or more hot air than it’s worth?

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Comments

I echo your concerns that all the CA has done is draw an alliance with a brand that just wants to appear to be doing the right thing.
But this campaign misses the entire point completely.
The problem is an empty Alliance made up of brands (in their air conditioned ivory towers, which I guarantee will be running their A/C systems 24/7) preaching to the poor, in a predominantly poor.
here lies within over-population of all our cities. Have you ever been to Santiago in the summer, or NYC or Kuala Lumpor for that matter. Anywhere that has high temperature summers means the cities become unbearable. But our economic systems have made sure that we are all drawn to the cities to escape the villages and make our money.
This advert showcases no global warming, but a high-rise apartment building that without A/C would be unbearable not to mention unhealthy. The only reason that the high-rise needs A/C is because the building is probably badly built with poor ventilation and only exists because of the reasons I’ve just stated.
What would Columbia or the CA prefer the occupants did - turn off the A/C and generate enough body to self-combust?
How about instead of a billboard being designed, photography being commissioned/bought, printed, and attached to the building; pay for and install solar panels on the roof to power the A/C system? With solar and thermal energy systems now you can store collected energy.
Do that Columbia and I’d respect you more in the morning.