By: Adnan Arnautlija
Photo of Nikola Žinić by: Berislava Picek/Cropix; author of photographs from Maksimir is Domagoj Kunić
WWF, the regional branch of one of the largest organisations for environmental protection would like to raise awareness of Croatians about its activities. The polls show that when asked why they don’t recycle, people say they haven’t got the time. The excuse that we haven’t got time for nature conservation or sustainable development is unacceptable.
On the 24th of May, on the European Parks Day, WWF Adria rolled out a PR activation, to make people ask themselves what would it be like if, for a change, nature didn’t have time for them. On the morning of the 24th of May, the biggest park in Zagreb, Maksimir was covered in yellow tape informing the visitors that the park was closed. Many who use the park for recreation or walking were surprised indeed. Soon after, WWF sent the message out that “the nature hasn’t got time for you today”. All relevant Croatian media reported on the campaign.
And that isn’t surprising, as this is a great campaign that placed among the Top 25 BalCannes campaigns in the region.
We learned all we wanted to know about this project from Nikola Žinić, Chief Creative Officer of the agency Bruketa&Žinić&Grey.
We came up with the idea… while talking with people about their relationship towards nature, and it turned out that most of the people don’t have time to even think about it, and take nature for granted. That’s why we decided to turn the situation around, and show them what it’s like when nature doesn’t have time for people.
Our guiding thought was… how to cheaply show what would happen if the nature goes on strike.
During the implementation, the biggest problem we encountered was… getting the permits to close down Maksimir.
We consider the greatest contribution of this campaign to be… the fact that at least for a moment we got people to think about their own attitude towards nature.
And it is special because of… the maximum engagement of the client, who really made an effort in labeling this huge park at all its entrances. The entire Zagreb office of WWF spent an entire day at the Maksimir talking to visitors.
When it comes to our project, we are most proud of… the positive reactions of people who stopped in front of the park and supported the campaign, although they could have just torn the barriers and enter the park.
If we were to go from the scratch… perhaps we would start preparing earlier, and include more parks.
Throughout the process we learned that… in this type of guerilla action you should always to a rehearsal and go through the moments and details of the action, so it wouldn’t happen that during a campaign to preserve nature we use plastic signs. Although, we did neatly clean everything afterwards.
What you certainly didn’t know is that… every day Maksimir is visited by numerous school groups. We didn’t count on that, but the kids, with little help from teachers, understood why we were doing this. And they got some unplanned additional education about preservation of nature.
We brought with us from BalCannes… Chiavalon Olive Oil from Vodnjani.
