A new “Creative Gallery on Sustainable Communications” listing 1,000 or so corporate and public campaign ads was launched by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in July this year. Targeting chiefly communications experts, the resource <www.unep.fr/pc/sustain/advertising/ads.htm> is the first of its kind. Entries are selected by UNEP, Adforum and Advertising Community Together (ACT) from an initial inventory of over 40,000 global ads going back to 1997. The gallery is a goldmine for advertising agencies looking to capitalise on the emerging “green” consumer market.

Of course, the ads are included for users’ own professional, non-commercial or educational use, but UNEP hopes the gallery will inspire and foster more and better communication on sustainability issues from all stakeholders involved in the promotion of sustainable development. The database is also intended to aid and promote research, education and information relating to the marketing, advertising and communication business.

The gallery’s contents are classified into 24 sustainability themes, and this provides one of the main starting points for a search. Themes pertaining to ethical business and corporate social responsibility, health and sanitation, poverty, and consumption patterns stand alongside more “classical” environmental issues like biodiversity, freshwater and energy.
Identifying an ad of particular interest by theme is rather hit-and-miss, since the user must browse pages of jpeg thumbnails. The more “advanced search,” however, includes classical drop-down menus so you can make detailed searches by theme, country, business sector (such as apparel, fashion and footwear) and media (e.g. newspaper, cinema, radio, etc). Free-text fields enable searches by advertiser, agency, and keyword. Naturally, search terms can also be combined, allowing very targeted searches.

Search results offer thumbnails with some basic reference data: title, advertiser, country of origin, publisher, and media format. Select one and you will also see the publication date and tagline beside a larger image of the ad or an mpeg (which you can conveniently “send to a friend”). There is useful information about the “context” of the ad and the “philosophy/solution” and details on the results it achieved, as well. Unfortunately this is not consistently available across all entries, so users cannot always benefit from advertisers’ experiences.

But whether you are hunting for a particular ad or are just media-curious, the gallery’s contents are definitely worth a browse (and that should appeal to all “creatives”). The “Save Water” campaign ad for Barcelona’s Terrassa City Council, for example, is a gem: A man urinates in a public latrine and as he finishes, washes his hands in his urine. The tagline is: “Save water today, save doing this tomorrow.” The gallery’s programme officer, Solange Montillaud-Joyel, told Green Horizon that a new online feature will shortly allow visitors to rate the ads — an excellent idea as there’s nothing more valuable than user feedback.
Green Horizon’s marketing and sales coordinator, Alex Gregorio, sees the gallery as a useful resource for identifying potential magazine advertisers, although he opined, “It’s a pity so few of the included campaigns are current, and what’s more, hypertext links are not included for ad producers.”

The green gallery could become a valuable resource for highlighting advertising’s impact on environmental awareness and sustainable development. Needless to say, new ad submissions are welcomed online from all advertisers, including companies, governments, local authorities, consumer organisations and NGOs.