How to Sell Anything 101 — use sex or pandas. Better yet, both.
That’s what DDB NY did when working with the Wildlife Conservation Film Festival in a pro bono capacity to drive awareness about the nature conservancy. “They wanted to come up with a way to engage the youth to think about endangered species,” says Icaro Doria, Chief Creative Officer at DDB NY in an interview with Beet.TV.
That sparked the creation of the “endangered love” brand. “The most effective way to avoid extinction is having sex, so we showed pandas, rhinos, sloths having sex,” Doria explains. The agency created online videos set to the Lonely Island tune of “I Just Had Sex” and featuring cartoon pandas having just done the deed. The video rolled out in the last few weeks and is designed to foster awareness of “global biodiversity.”
“People liked the song and wanted to engage with it, so that gave us a head start. Add in the panda factor, and you don’t have to do much else,” he says.
The canvas that online video affords creatives in the ad business is tremendous, he says. “When I started you had limited space — a radio spot, a TV spot, a print ad. Now the amount of things we can come up with that people will engage with is so exciting.”
The range of options also raises the bar for creativity, he adds.
