Half a billion ants protest against deforestation using lasercut leaves in WWF campaign

Five hundred thousand leafcutter ants from Cologne Zoo joined a Cannes Lion award-winning five day protest march against deforestation, organised by conservation organisation WWF; celebrating it’s 50th birthday.

Slogans such as ‘save trees’ and ‘ban the saw’ were laser-cut into leaves, which were then carried by the unwitting ants. As with the vast majority of ideas, it’s essentially a smarter reworking of another campaign, in this instance, here’s a remarkably similar, less slick version of an ant protest from 2010.

According to the description in the campaign video below, the work was awarded at Cannes in 2013 with the Grand Prix for Good, a Golden Lion in the category “promo & activation,” Silver in the “branded content” and a Bronze Lion in the “Direct” category.

The Ant Rally is from December 2012 and to be honest, I’m surprised I’ve only just heard about it, given I usually keep my ear to the ground and am often gratefully sent campaigns for this site and a weekly column I only recently stopped writing. I wonder if it’s one of those nice ideas that just circulates within certain factions of the marketing industry, perpetually praised by practitioners and at award time by backslappers who wished they’d thought of it, but one that didn’t inspire any actual public reaction. It’d be good to know how much of an effect on donations or awareness it really had.

Source: Web Curios

Involved agency: BBDO Dusseldorf

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