Please, please, advertise the revolution!

Much as my personal politics prevent me from saying this with too much enthusiasm, I am in some ways quite happy that the Supreme Court denied Al Gore the presidency. If it weren’t for him, who would be the galvanizing figurehead for the fight against climate change? I feel like he really has the right idea about how to get us–as Americans, and as citizens of the modern, consumer-oriented world–interested in joining him on the front lines. As announced on 60 Minutes and reported by the New York Times, the Alliance for Climate Change, a nonprofit founded by Gore, is launching a “three-year $300 million advertising blitz to recruit 10 million advocates to seek laws and policies that can cut greenhouse gases.” The blitz kicks off today, but you can view the initial ad on this child site of the ACC.

A curse of the “green revolution” has been poor marketing. The green image has been clunky, outdated, draped with cartoon flowers, scented with patchouli, and somehow equated with living in a hut in the woods. Now that addressing climate change is coming from economic, political, and even celebrity circles, all that is changing…but it takes time, and more than time, it takes money. Advertising money. At the NESEA’s recent conference in Boston, I attended a session on green marketing where the essential quality of branding was emphasized. $300 million dollars won’t buy out all the spots during the Superbowl, but if it’s spent wisely, maybe it can rebrand green as the next cool thing.

I can see this going wrong, of course. If the campaign tends towards the PSA style of “Your Brain on Drugs” as the NYT article intimates, I doubt how much good it will do. No one likes to be lectured. “Got Milk?” is more in line with what the movement needs, but I think it can and should be taken even beyond that. Heavens preserve us from a reprise of “the 1971 advertisement featuring a tearful American Indian considering a polluted landscape” that a program aide mentioned to the NYT.

The trouble with any green campaign is finding a single icon around which the advertising can focus. A polar bear? Not really on target. An electric car? Mixed messages. Carbon sequestration? Abstract…and not really sexy.

If you’re reading this, you’re self-selected as a prime target group for the ads. So here’s my question to you, GetSolar readers: what image or motif for a green media blitz would motivate and stimulate you? “Got Solar?” jokes absolutely forbidden.