NEWS
Denver Water: Waste is Out
We held our breath a long time this summer to see some photos of one of our favorite annual campaigns finally break. The outdoor for Denver Water is back, courtesy of Sukle Advertising & Design. And the work certainly meets the standard they've set.
"With the recession still lingering fresh in consumers’ minds, frugality is en vogue like never before. But rather than use a highfalutin phrase like “Frugality is en vogue” to rally Denverites, we went with “Waste is out” to spearhead this summer’s Denver Water conservation campaign.
To demonstrate the proposition and lead by example, we reused old billboards and placed a thin vinyl snipe over the existing art, using only 8% of the vinyl that a newly printed board would. Of course, we couldn’t have pulled it off without the help of Anthony’s Pizza, Fairmount Cemetery, Qdoba, Steamboat Ski Resort and our amigos at Cultivator and Xuma Communications. Thanks for helping us use only what we need, y’all."
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SimplyAwesome !
Nice guys. Congrats :)
I'm going to recycle a comment:
Nice guys, Congrats :)
This is really nice. Good work fellas.
Great work
Really nice idea but the lines I think could be kind of confusing without the backstory, no? To a consumer driving by at 85 mph, it's still a billboard. So in the .05 seconds someone might actually glance at it, I think the result will be disconnect not clarity of message. Maybe design could have been less polished to emphasize the "recycled/no waste" message, so it reads at a glance? Anyway, ad people will surely love it and that certainly counts for a lot too!
This reverberate with me much more than the man's time of the month. Great work Sukle!
I bet the covered advertisers appreciate the extended buy(when you can read it, IE steamboat).
nice! if you live in Advertisingtown 1986
A consumer:
65 is the speed limit—and go drive past it and then relay your thoughts.
Seems like a mighty loooong way to a ham sandwich.
hey anon--at any speed, the lines are still inscrutable. that's the point. do you honestly believe all that concept explanation above comes through to a driver/consumer in a half-second glance? As stated, nice idea but it smacks of advertising for advertising people. Just doesn't hold water without the explanation, and that's too late for the consumer to care.
This is the kind of work that makes Denver proud.
And no one else.
Couldn't disagree more, stantheman. Mark our words, you'll see this work in Archive, CA, and it'll definitely be in the OBIEs next year – the show for the best outdoor. We're predicting best of show. Check back in next May for the announcement about whether we were right.
Year after year, this campaign stays interesting. Keep it up Sukle...good stuff.
stantheman,
Why not make comments you can be proud of? Then login before you comment. When people read your insight, they click on your name, check out your work, which you're also proud of. You build a reputation. This could lead to friendships, work and a feeling of belonging to a great community, which Denver is.
bigjon,
I'm assuming when you say "nice! if you live in Advertisingtown 1986," you're sarcastically saying that the work Sukle has done here isn't very original. This is ironic, because your comment isn't very original. In fact, someone used the 80's put-down on Felix in his "Stop Thinking with your Mac" editorial about a week ago. Your opinion would carry a lot more weight if you took your own advice.
Matthew Wyne,
You are correct. I was being sarcastic. I apologize if my comment wasn't original enough for you. However, wouldn't it make more sense to focus more on the originality of the work coming out of Denver, than, say, the originality of the comments on this website? Therein lies the problem. I'm sorry, but we'll just have to agree to disagree about the Denver Water work. It's not bad work, but it certainly doesn't deserve the accolades it's getting on the egoist. The whole "billboard on top of a billboard" has been done to death. Not to mention, the idea of reusing a billboard, only to cover it up with another billboard, sort of defeats the purpose of the message, doesn't it? Ultimately, they're not actually reusing the billboard, they're just covering it up, expecting us to understand that an old pizza billboard is under there, and then, somehow connect that back to using less water. Sorry, it just doesn't quite come back. These kinds of ideas are 'near' concepts. The feel like an idea. They look like an idea. But they're not really an idea. Ultimately, it's borrowed interest.
If the purpose of this site is to "help denver suck less", then the comments need to be honest instead of praise for the sake of praise sake. Outside of Denver, at a respected national agency, this idea would never fly. I hope one day Denver Water proves me wrong.
Shocking, I know, but this thread brings up a really useful discussion:
Is the work "good" because it will be effective in helping Denver Water achieve its conservation goals? Or is it good because, as TDE points out, it's the kind of clever that's likely to win awards?
As mentioned, the consumer won't get to hear the nice story around the concept. So what is it? Will it work, will win awards or will it do both? And what really matters to you?
Good work should do both – be effective for clients and win awards. The Denver Water campaign has been fortunate that it has had a dramatic effect on water consumption and picked up a few accolades along the way.
I enjoy the comments. Keep them coming.
Keep up the awesome Denver Water work, Mike!
I saw a guy driving a branded car at Starbucks so I asked him if he worked for Denver Water. He said, "No, they just pay me to drive around all day."
Waste is out? The irony.
I don't really think a normal consumer, especially one who's been exposed to Sukle's work for Denver Water would need a back - or any other kind of story to get these ads - they're using creative to drive home a point that waste is out - given that the client is Denver Water, one could assume that wasting water is out.
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