The headquarters of SpaceX, Elon Musk's headquarters in California, woke up on Earth Day with a message that read: "Mars sucks. Signed: the Earth”. The phrase, printed on the fence closest to his offices, was a criticism of the tycoon's plans to transform Mars into a habitable planet. The image went around the world and disappeared 30 hours later. “It was an idea that we proposed to a client, and since in the end he backed down, we decided to pay for the fence ourselves. It is ridiculous to invest millions in colonizing Mars instead of trying to save life on Earth," says Paco Conde, co-founder and creative of the Los Angeles-based agency Activista, who appears on the Zoom screen with the same message printed on his t-shirt: “Mars Sucks”.
Conde and his partner, Beto Fernández, decided a decade ago to apply logic to creativity and their ideas revolutionized the sector. One of the first was Immortal Fans. In 2013 they proposed to the members of the Sport Club Do Recife (Brazil's first division soccer team) that they become organ donors so that their eyes or lungs would continue to be part of the club's fans even after they died and they got 51,000 cards of donors, a number greater than the capacity of the stadium.
“The job of a creative is not to invent. It is to observe, find universal truths and transform them into ideas. With Immortal Fans we managed to reduce the waiting lists for cornea and heart transplants in the region to zero”, explains Conde. After the success, they received proposals to replicate the action. The BBC published an article stating that PSG and FC Barcelona were interested. They proposed to Barclays, the main sponsor of the Premier League, to sponsor the idea. “Can you imagine how many lives could have been saved if the Premier had supported the initiative? I don't know why it didn't come out, but I can't help but think that as an industry we are a bit of an asshole, because we believe that an idea that has been made cannot be replicated again. I am convinced that if the publishers managed Marvel, which lives on sequels,the franchise would have collapsed years ago”, concludes Beto.
In October 2021, three days before the opening of the world climate summit, the United Nations released a shocking video to warn governments about the need to stop climate change.
In the short film, a dinosaur bursts into the iconic plenary session of the UN headquarters in New York, approaches the speakers' gallery and delivers a speech about global warming that ends with a reflection: "We at least had the asteroid.
What is your excuse for extinction?
The UN Development Program (UNDP) had contacted them with a
brief
as clear as it is terrifying: warning about the consequences of climate change. "The first thing we thought was: if the UN is crossing the political barrier to deal with this issue, it is that the problem is more serious than we think." And his second thought was: how to impact people with a subject that provokes so much indifference? They came up with an
outsider
who would observe how we are destroying the planet and say out loud: “You are fucking crazy”. Thus Frankie the dinosaur was born. The piece was translated into 35 languages, voiced by Game of Thrones actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau; written by David Litt, former Obama speechwriter, and even blessed by the Pope.
“There is a false myth of sustainability that makes us feel guilty about climate change because we don't recycle, we don't have an electric car,” recalls Conde, “but the main problem is fossil fuels.
Countries spend more than 300 million euros a year to subsidize them.
We managed to get a campaign to point out the origin of the problem and exculpate the citizens.
The whole world talked about it.
That is the meaning of creativity.”