Greenpeace activists target Cannes Lions 2022, one returns his old Lions metal as a bunch storm the WPP beach
A ban on fossil fuel advertising was the wake-up call.
Gustav Martner is a former Cannes Lions judge and awardee; a Golden Lion, which he won in 2007 for a Volkswagen advertisement. In 2022, he crashed the festival’s opening ceremony only to return it in protest of fossil fuel advertising.
Martner, a former agency creative director, revealed in a LinkedIn post that it was about Volkswagen’s 2015 #Dieselgate scandal and that of former US Vice President Al Gore An uncomfortable truth Documentary about climate change that changed his view of his industry.
According to the BBC, #Dieselgate was the scandal that erupted when “the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that many VW cars sold in America had a ‘defeat device’ – or software – in diesel engines that could detect when they were being tested.” and changed the performance accordingly to improve the results. The German auto giant has since admitted cheating on emissions tests in the US.”
Martner wrote in the post, “…ad industry elite has been a huge disappointment. The big networks and the brightest minds are still working for the oil companies, for the airliners, to sell ICE SUVs. It has to stop.”
Greenpeace Nordic creative director Martner told Adweek: “I’ve started to reconsider the role of advertising. Our role has been to develop the ideas that will drive change – drive change faster – to a low-carbon society, to a fossil-free society.”
However, this was not an isolated case. At the time of writing, Greenpeace activists had stormed the WPP beach to protest fossil fuel advertising.
The Drum posted a video of them protesting on the shore.
That’s fine reads on the cards held up by protesters, which according to a Twitter post was the copy seen on placards “along the low wall between Spotify and Twitter beaches at #CannesLions2022”.
However, this was not the first time a protest took place at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. In 2019, Extinction Rebellion disrupted the Cannes Lions Festival to “call on the industry to speak the truth about the climate and environmental emergency and to encourage their customers to do the same”.