Toxic Toby
BreezoMeter
Issue 49 | December 2018
Agency
McCann London
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officers Laurence Thomson, Rob Doubal Creatives James Crosby, Will Cottam
Production Team
Producer Duncan Groves Production agency CRAFT
Other Credits
Account Director Christos Cardovillis Account Manager Rohin Lalli Project Manager Paul Gillespie Communications Director Katya Escala Comms Planner Nick Kavanagh Junior Planner Tara Henderson Designers Dan Howarth, Nazima Motegheria, Harold Perrin Type designers Dalton Maag Talent Toxic Toby, the clean air bear
Date
September 2018
Background
McCann London teamed up with BreezoMeter’s air quality data experts to raise awareness around London’s “silent killer”, its toxic air, by placing a roadside memorial in the capital’s pollution blackspots to highlight the startling 9,400 premature deaths associated with this public health issue.
Idea
But this wasn’t your typical roadside memorial. It featured Toxic Toby, a cute and cuddly animatronic soft toy that was fighting for the human right to breathe clean air. Toby was connected to BreezoMeter’s real-time, location-based air quality data.
Whenever air pollution reached dangerously high levels, it triggered the bear to cough.
Each time Toxic Toby coughed, a tweet was sent automatically to local MPs warning them that pollution levels had reached precarious limits, reminding them that they needed to act. Toxic Toby was intended to be attached to street lamp posts in London’s pollution hotspots, where the levels of toxic air regularly exceeded the recommended legal EU limits.
The project’s goal was to use BreezoMeter’s advanced technology and Toby’s emotive power to raise public awareness around the startling health dangers of environmental contamination. Local government needs to step up action against air pollution and face the stark reality that it causes nearly 40 times as many deaths as car accidents.
Results
Not yet available.
Our Thoughts
There’s a big difference between having a social conscience and trying to cheat a jury with scam creative work. Toby falls on the side of conscience, an agency using its skills to do something about a problem that Government and Local Government is trying hard to ignore. To create the sort of noise that draws attention to an issue you either need shocking drama or you need creativity.
Good on McCann for generating much needed press interest in the unnoticed killer of air pollution. Because it’s children who are most at risk, creating a teddy bear to raise a warning is particularly appropriate.