Avaaz, continuing in what has become a great tradition of parody ads, took out space in the "Green New Deal" supplement in the Financial Times today. A quarter page ad on the front page depicts Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and Yukio Hatoyama in shiny black outfits and dark sunglasses, posing the question "What is the CliMatrix?" and inviting readers to turn to the back page to find out.

Avaaz took out an advertisement timed to coincide with a summit of EU leaders to try to push for support of a climate finance package and set the stage for Copenhagen in December. The proximity of the summit to Halloween lent itself to a concept that was a lot of fun to work on. As usual, the timing was short, but it turned out well and is printed full page, in full color, in today's international edition of the Financial Times.

TckTckTck had a chance to put a full page, full-color ad on the back page of the Financial Times the day before UN climate talks began in New York and leading up to the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh. We were able to work with them under tight time constraints to develop a visual for their message. See below for the text of the ad, encouraging the leaders that will be attending the talks to take advantage of the opportunity to lead the way towards a fair, ambitious and binding deal in Copenhagen.

The third ad in the G8 series by Avaaz.org parodied Street Fighter II, the video game popular in the early nineties which "featured a roster of eight playable characters that could be selected by the player. Ryu and Ken, the main characters from the original Street Fighter returned along with six new characters from different nationalities." [Wikipedia]

[Download a printable PDF of this ad]

Second in a series of three, this ad ran in conjunction with the G8 meetings in Japan. The subject matter was a pop culture reference to something from Japan, a parody of "Hello Kitty" to call out the leaders who are blocking progress on the climate change issue.

This ad was the first in a series of three which we worked on with Avaaz.org in conjunction with the G8 meetings in Japan in July of 2008. The opening of the meetings coincided with the beginning of the Tanabata festival, "when people in Japan write their wishes for the year ahead and tie them to bamboo trees." A number of other groups also partnered on this ad (Oxfam, Save the Children, ONE, and GCAP), and they had been collecting virtual "wishes" from their constituents.