Indeed, grass says
the dumbest things
Agency posts cartoon bubbles on Denver lawns
By Toni Fitzgerald
Aug 12, 2009
In terms of interesting messages, save water ranks down near the bottom, right below eat your vegetables.
Yes, do keep the faucet turned off, and yes, don't waste water watering the lawn and, yes, let's talk about something else.
How do you make the save-water message interesting?
That was the challenge presented to Sukle Advertising & Design of Denver by its client, Denver Water, the aim being to get people to spend less time watering their lawns.
"We wanted people to reduce sprinkler timers by two minutes,” says Mike Sukle, who worked on the campaign. “The research led us to the correct message. But you can tell people something a million times and they won’t remember it unless you give them a reason to.”
The answer: Make them laugh with cartoon bubbles.
The point the agency wanted to make was that grass is dumb, too dumb to notice if you cut back on your watering time.
So it went about town posting cartoon bubbles on lawns saying really dumb things, as if the grass were talking, like, “Yes, that dress makes you look fat” and “Who are you, Alfred Einstein?”
Behind the bubble signs was another square sign that read "Grass is dumb,” in large capital white letters against an orange background and below, in smaller letters. “Water 2 minutes less. Your lawn won’t notice.” The Denver Water logo appeared at the bottom. The bubbles were attached to wire holders that were stuck into the ground.
The alternative element was part of a larger campaign that included TV, billboard and web advertising, to neighborhoods in the metro Denver area that it believed would be receptive to the signs. Clusters of a half-dozen signs went up in June and will be taken down later this month.
Sukle cited the movie “Dumb and Dumber” as inspiration for the bubbles.
The campaign works because it’s just off the wall enough to draw people’s attention. And it's funny.
Best of all, the message is communicated not on your water bill or on a web site, where it’s easy to overlook it, but on the actual lawn, where the watering takes place. There’s a direct link between the message and its context.
“The non-traditional tactics really make an impact,” Sukle says. “Not enough marketers take them seriously. They’re very difficult to forecast an ROI for, so too many times they get a polite chuckle and tossed aside. Denver Water has always believed in interesting work to generate results.”
It seems to have worked in this case. Sukle says water usage is way below normal so far this year, and the campaign got coverage on advertising blogs and in local newspapers.
It even inspired some surprising correspondence.
“In a world of political correctness, the only thing you make fun of is grass, though we did receive one letter defending grass and questioning our sensitivity,” Sukle says. “At least people are noticing the work.”
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