creative advertising | jwt shanghai’s shan shui animation ///

The China Environment Protection Foundation (CEPF) recently commissioned JWT Shanghai to develop three print advertisements using shan shui style art by renowned landscape artist Yang Yongliang. The advertisements, titled Global Warming, Industrial Pollution, and Automotive Pollution, aimed to raise public awareness of ongoing environmental damage to China’s environment. The ads bear a striking resemblance to traditional Chinese paintings but, when looked at closely, portray environmentally unfriendly factories, cars, and buildings littering the landscape.

The print ads have been adapted into an excellent animated short (see below) directed by Li Hailong from Beijing’s One Production.

Li, a graduate of the Beijing Film Academy with a degree in animation, told us he did not try to solely address environmental issues but also social ones as well: “The campaign expresses a societal attitude change with respect to the concept of “survival” – it activates an “environmental mindset” by addressing motives deeply rooted in everyone’s psyche: the universal drive for continuance and the desire for a comfortable life.”

Li explained that he made use of exaggerated imagery in order to emphasize the lack of space and suffocation people are confronted with today in China – a phenomenon, he says, that leads to increased levels of societal anxiety, confusion, and ultimately, a redefinition of necessity that exploits nature and replaces it with artificial substitutes.

At any rate, we think the animation is superb – its closing copy says it all: “Let the hills be hills and the rivers be rivers. Let nature be.” Bravo JWT and One Production.

For more creative advertising in China on NeochaEDGE, link here. /// Jellyfish