Deforested Desktop
Green Nation
Issue 36 | September 2015
Agency
Grey Brazil
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer Rodrigo Jatene Creative Director Federico Russi Creative Team Pedro Rocha Fabio Barbato
Production Team
Producers Natacha Veiga Renata Ruas Ian Inglez Digital Production Studio Manga Production House Stage 25 Executive Producer Filipe Godoy
Other Credits
Client Francisco Ferraz Account Team Sylvia Panico
Date
May 2015
Background
Green Nation was one of the most important NGOs in Brazil promoting the responsible use of natural resources to protect the environment.
Deforestation was a massive problem. In 2014 alone, 70,000 sq.km of natural forest was destroyed simply to produce paper.
The challenge was to encourage office employees to use the print button of their computers sparingly.
Idea
When office workers sat at their desks in the city, they could not see the harm being done to the forests. The idea was to change that. An app could be downloaded which transformed the desktop background image into a picture of lush rainforest. The more often the employee used the print facility, the more depleted became the image of the forest on their computers.
It was a visual demonstration that the more people printed, the more they deforested.
Results
50 large corporations in Brazil installed the app and reported significant decrease in the use of paper. By the end of 2015, the app will be running in more than 1,000 companies, impacting millions of users each day.
Our Thoughts
A lot of creative people get exasperated by talk of data and say that no matter how much data you have, it is no substitute for an idea. That misses the point. Data almost always provides the platform for an idea. Once the data tells you exactly what sort of area and how fast the forests are shrinking, then it's simply a matter of finding a way of visualizing that startling fact. In a press ad, a TV ad or even in an app that slowly eats its way through your desktop image.