Take a quotidian issue, like changing your light bulbs, and turn it into a multimedia extravaganza. Lay all your information out in a totally unconventional cartoon style that breaks ever rule of usability and turns the experience of the website into a game. Design the thing as if Monty Python and Peter Max had taken over Greenpeace, and deliver solid arguments about the costs of incandescents vs CFLs vs LEDs with a scrawly handwritten grocery list typeface that makes it impossible not to feel like you’re getting plain truth from a smart friend. Applaud Australia for banning incandescents by making fun of their national anthem with a Kangaroo. Take issues like mercury in Compact Fluorescents seriously by making light of them and providing solid information about how to minimize their impact. Add zany videos of fish people and bobcat people and throw enough goofy animated eyecandy into the whole thing to keep a four year old happily mousing around for a half an hour (I finally had to take him out of my lap and just leave him in front of the screen to play).
Shake well.
What pours out of the pitcher is Unscrew America, which I hereby award the first annual “This Site Should Win Every Damn Award on the Planet” Award.
I found myself clicking on everything on the screen just to see what kind of jack-in-the-box content might be hiding behind that tree, and in the course of doing so I laughed, I learned and I wanted to tell all my friends. Now that’s a fine piece of campaigning.
Ricken Patel, the Executive Director of Avaaz, sent me the link to the site this morning. He called it a “bit crazy, but fascinating.” Now Ricken and I have hoed a few rows in the fields of online campaigning, and for this to leap out of the crowd for both of us says something.
And one thing it says is I want to find out who is responsible for this mayhem, and hire them.
–b
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Tags: cfls, leds, lightbulbs, climate chaos
