ACT - Advertising Community Together is a non-profit association that showcases ads on social, environmental and sustainable development accessible on its website. They also produce a worldwide touring exhibition shown at public and professional events, conferences and debates within the communication industry. Its goal is to promote and inspire responsible communication on sustainability, equitable development and social responsibility. ACT shows how advertising professionals from all continents can use their core talent - creativity - to play a significant role in addressing today’s crucial world issues.

They are preparing a new exhibition that will be premiered in Cannes 20-26 June 2009 before starting its annual world tour. It illustrates the main issues of Sustainable Development from the environmental to the social and demonstrates the power of “creativity” on today’s crucial issues.

They are gathering worldwide ads about sustainable development themes :

- Environnemental Ads: Visual communication examples regarding environmental areas, such as Water Preservation, Climate Change, Biodiversity and natural areas Protection, Desertification, Renewable Energies…
- Social Ads: Visual illustrations on subjects such as Solidarity, Human Rights, Childhood Protection, Poverty, Education, Sanitation, Racism…and also Alcohol Abuse, Drug Addiction, Personal Health, Road Safety, Obesity Prevention, Organ Donation,..

Why become part of the ACT Exhibition?

- After 7 years, ACT is now well known by the Advertising Community as a key player in Communication and Sustainable Development topics.
- Be part of a great Worldtour of Exhibitions including Cannes 2009. Since Cannes 2008, The Expo has been seen in over 10 locations around the world including the NY Advertising Week, EACA Euro Effies, Golden Drum, IAA and more.

See www.act-responsible.org

Companies will face tougher tests when advertising their green credentials, under proposals released recently.

The Committee of Advertising Practice, the industry’s self-regulator, proposes to expand the environmental and social responsibility sections of the broadcast advertising code, to “prevent marketers from exaggerating the environmental benefits of their products”.

The clampdown on greenwashing is part of a wider consultation into the first major changes to the advertising code in eight years.

CAP’s proposed new rules require green advertising on television to be based on the full life cycle of the advertised product or service. It also will use general principles rather than specific rules, which it says could quickly become outdated.

“Absolute claims must be supported by a high level of substantiation,” the proposed rules say, although comparative terms such as “greener” may be allowed in some circumstances.

“It provides a catchall for the unintended and the unexpected,” said Andrew Brown, chairman of CAP and BCAP, the broadcast committee.

Complaints about greenwashing have risen sharply, reflecting the increased popularity of environmental claims in advertisements. In 2006, the Advertising Standards Authority received approximately 117 complaints about 83 advertisements, rising to 561 complaints about 410 advertisements in 2007.

Environmental claims have become a “new form of competitive language for advertisers”, requiring tighter rules that provide “less excuse through ignorance and obfuscation”, said Mr Brown.

David Norman, director of campaigns at WWF UK, whose complaint against an advertisement by Royal Dutch Shell last year was upheld by the ASA, gave the change in rules a cautious welcome.

“WWF would say certainly it sounds like a good move to strengthen regulations so that those companies who do have genuine investments in green technology and answers to climate change are rewarded for that, rather than the companies who invest in marketing.”

Mr Brown said that in general, the review of advertising rules – the first to revise broadcast and general advertising codes simultaneously in their 50-year history – was designed to help broadcasters and advertisers adapt to an increasingly fragmented media landscape.

The new rules are expected to come into force next year.

IFAW recently scooped Sustain Magazines Business & Society Award for Communication for the Adopt a Humpback Campaign that GREEN produced.

The overall aim of this campaign was to stop Japanese whalers from carrying out their threat to kill humpback whales in a sanctuary in Antarctica. By “adopting” named whales for all UK MPs, we hoped to engage and motivate them to do all they could to deter Japan from killing these 50 humpbacks – a vulnerable species decimated by whaling in the last century.

One of IFAW’s key international campaigns is to end commercial or so-called “scientific” whaling and protect whales. We hoped MPs would support IFAW’s work and continue lobbying against whaling at the annual International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting.

The overall campaign objective behind the Adopt a Humpback project was achieved, as a few weeks after the campaign was launched, Japan announced that it would not kill any humpback whales during the 2007/early 2008 whaling season in Antarctica’s Southern Ocean Sanctuary. While this may yet turn out to be only a temporary reprieve for these whales (at the time Japan pledged only that it would not take any humpbacks before the 2008 IWC meeting in June), there has been no clear indication since as to when Japan intends to resume the hunt for these whales.

In August 2008, IFAW welcomed the news that the status of humpback whales on the world’s Red List of endangered species has been moved from “vulnerable” to “least concern” after the population made a considerable recovery since the moratorium on commercial whaling came into effect in 1986.

Another aim of the campaign, to engage and motivate MPs to protect the humpbacks and to be active on the whaling issue generally, was also achieved. 154 MPs responded to the adoption pack, with 63 attending the photo call and a further 91 requesting press releases so they could highlight the issue with their local and regional media despite not being able to attend the photo call. Many MPs also used a follow-up press release revealing that the humpbacks were no longer being targeted. More than 100 newspaper stories appeared on the MP humpback adoption campaign, as well as a small amount of radio coverage. In addition, many MPs responded to our request to write to the Foreign Secretary and the Japanese Ambassador on the issue.

The next time we needed MPs to be really active on the whaling issue – in the run-up to this year’s IWC meeting – we sent another eye-catching mailing. This one was designed to build on the interest from the humpback adoption and encourage MPs to write to countries we feared may vote with the pro-whalers in favour of overturning the ban on commercial whaling.

To make this issue as interesting as possible, as well as being informative, we sent them another foldout pack with a teaser message. The outside read “one person” and as it was folded out continued with “influencing one minister”, “can swing one vote”, eventually showing a map of the world with pro-whaling nations, anti-whaling nations and others. It urged MPs to target five countries in particular, and to push for the creation of a new whale sanctuary in the South Atlantic.

Campaign recognition surveys of MPs have shown widespread recognition of IFAW’s Adopt a Humpback campaign and also indicated whaling was one of the issues they received most correspondence about from constituents. In previous years, MPs had told us whaling was not an issue which their constituents often raised with them.

In a meeting with Marine Minister Jonathan Shaw MP prior to this year’s IWC meeting, he said he had received representations from 250 MPs on the issue. To keep MPs interested and active on whaling we intend to keep sending them personalised updates on their whales as and when sightings occur.