| Date | |
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| Author | DCM |
| Categories | News |
Airline pollution activists Plane Stupid are on a collision course with the advertising regulator after launching a graphic cinema campaign that sees CGI polar bears falling to bloody deaths to highlight the impact of carbon emissions.
Plane Stupid's ad, which breaks in cinemas and online today, features dozens of animated polar bears falling from the sky onto a city centre, bouncing off skyscrapers and landing in the street and on the roof of a car, accompanied by blood-spurting special effects.
The only sound, apart from the bone-crunching thump of the impacts, is the steadily increasing whine of a jet airliner's engines.
Plane Stupid's campaign, developed by the ad agency Mother, aims to show the impact that global warming is having on polar ice caps.
The group is aiming to point out that even short flights to the continent have a major impact on carbon emissions. Plane Stupid said that the ad was inspired by the fact that an average European flight produces 400kg of carbon, which it claims is the same weight as an average female polar bear.
"We wanted to confront people with the impact that short-haul flights have on the climate," said Robert Saville, a director at Mother. "We used polar bears because they are a well understood symbol of the effect that climate change is having on the natural world."
The polar bears were created by special effects company MPC using its proprietary fur software, "Furtility", to look as realistic as possible.
The cinema ad breaks across UK cinemas today, through the film media company DCM. It will only show in movies with a 15 certificate or above.