Most environmental ads include one of 2 tropes: environmental disaster – forest fires, tumbling glaciers, floods, hurricanes etc; or doe-eyed children – “it’s their world we’re destroying”.

You can see why you’d go on one or both of these routes. But when you are aiming to reach the unconverted, you have to try harder if eyes are not going to glaze over.

Here we look at some alternative takes:

 
Rainforest Alliance: Follow the Frog

This has won a ton of awards, and rightly so. It has so much energy, is so original, is so unportentous (indeed makes fun of that), that you are utterly charmed into taking the small actions it is trying to persuade you to take. Wonderful.

Trees For London

We don’t usually include work by Hope, but this campaign from Hope Collective member, Mike Keane, is too brilliant to leave out. Winner of a One Show Gold Award.

WWF: Ice Cubes

A supremely simple idea, keeping you intrigued until the punchline.

 
Skellefteå Kraft: The Airport

This is a film by a Swedish energy company, Skellefteå Kraft. It gets over its USP of 100% recycled energy with this sweet idea.

Greenpeace: Forest Love

A mad idea – I can’t imagine it’s that persuasive – but you certainly want to know what the payoff is. (Note: semi-NSFW.)

The Idea Lab examines what makes effective (or ineffective) communications in the fields of causes, charities and socially-oriented businesses.