The LowCVP announces winners of ‘Cars NOT Carbon’ Marketing Challenge

Winners of the Cars NOT Carbon competition presented their innovative marketing and advertising campaigns yesterday at the LowCVP Annual Conference to a large audience of automotive and fuel industry delegates, Government representatives and other LowCVP stakeholders. Delegates were also able to visit an exhibition of the winning work.

[ClickPress, Fri Jun 29 2007] Changing attitudes by more effectively promoting greener vehicles and responsible travel behaviour is a challenging but necessary element in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from road transport. The ‘greening’ of marketing messages about cars, trucks, buses - and the fuels which power them – was a central theme of the LowCVP conference. The Cars NOT Carbon competition, which demonstrated some fine practical examples of how this can be done, was sponsored by the Energy Saving Trust, Transport for London (TfL), Asda and City Car Club and coordinated for the LowCVP by Satellite Marketing Communications.

The Cars NOT Carbon competition entries ranged from the practical to the conceptual; with entertaining, informative and occasionally slightly risqué concepts being presented across a variety of media forms.

According to Mike Longhurst, Senior Vice President EMEA Corporate Affairs at McCann Erickson, a judge and speaker at the conference: “It was encouraging to see so many people taking this competition seriously and producing - in many cases - some very interesting work.”

The work of several of the agency entries really shone in the eyes of the judges. Naresh Ramchandani, Guardian Columnist and founder of London’s St Lukes agency, commented that Intelligent Marketing (winner of the Low Carbon Passenger Cars category) produced “a great piece of thinking - an incredibly bold and elegant idea that praises carbon saints and shames carbon sinners without buying a single penny of media space. More than any other idea I saw, this idea deserves to be taken up.” Watch this space for their ‘know your carbon campaign’!

Ideas London produced the ‘Drive Smart, Drive Green’ slogan to go with their campaign, described by Naresh Ramchandani as “a campaign that cleverly combines education and satire - a campaign that shows all car owners how to drive greener by showing the most extreme car owners how to drive greener”. Indeed, the inversion of stereotypes as a way of changing peoples’ ‘herd’ mentality was a prominent theme of the works presented.

One of the most contested categories was ‘Responsible Vehicle Use’, which was designed to offer ways of looking again at our current uses of private vehicles, and our emphasis of and reliance on the car. Category sponsors City Car Club, who are a leading light in the drive towards national car-sharing, certainly identify with the message presented by the student winner. According to Naresh Ramchandani the poster campaign by agency winner in this category, AN Marketing Services - featuring the destination board familiar to bus users superimposed upon the bonnet of a car - “was a lovely illustration of both the principle and practice of car sharing”.

Interactivity was a key theme of several of the winning and highly commended entries. The relevance of games, animations and web campaigns was underscored by Nottingham student Andrew Cragg’s ‘You and Your Car’ concept, which came in the form of an interactive CD. “Give this man a job” was the heartening response of the judges!

The importance of responsible advertising in promoting low carbon vehicle and fuel choices was highlighted in a new survey of expert attitudes, also presented at the conference. The survey (of LowCVP expert members from diverse backgrounds) found that 83 per cent of respondents believe that the marketing of vehicles strongly influences consumer choices (just 12 per cent disagree). Furthermore, 78 per cent of respondents to the survey agreed that the content of vehicle advertising should be more strictly regulated to inform and encourage the purchase of low carbon vehicles.

The LowCVP Director Greg Archer said: “The LowCVP will continue to press the motor industry to strengthen current practices and will do so through an open and inclusive process. This must include clear rules regarding green claims made in advertisements, improving consumer information and determining what can be advertised where.”


LowCVP’s Head of Communications, Neil Wallis, commented: “The competition has successfully illustrated a range of innovative approaches to encourage low carbon travel choices. The next challenge is for the motor industry and other stakeholders to have the courage to apply challenging concepts such as these in their future projects.”

For more information and to download images of the winning and commended entries visit: http://www.lowcvp.org.uk/carsnotcarbon and follow the link to ‘winning entries’ or call the LowCVP Secretariat: 020 7222 8000.

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