Global warming never looked so cute
Cute can also personalize serious subjects or make them feel more accessible.
Firstborn's campaign for utility company National Grid attempts to dramatize carbon emissions by showing how a user's energy consumption affects the habitat of a polar bear and its cute cub.
The Pixar-quality animation of the website was important, LaCivita said, in order to make an impact.
"We wanted to put beauty and realism ahead of everything else in this project because the first thing we wanted to do was to make an emotional connection with the user," LaCivita said. If the disintegration of the ice floes becomes too tragic, a user can retreat to "playing" with the cub. Because the site was part of a public relations campaign aimed at families and school children, it had to have an immersive quality, LaCivita explained. Approximately 23,000 people have signed up on the site to curb their carbon emissions, and the average time spent interacting with it is nine minutes.
Similarly, AKQA created a site for Fiat's new eco model that features goofy cartoon characters explaining how Fiat's driving analysis software can help consumers reduce their carbon emissions.
The site also asks users to become part of an online community called eco:Ville as a show of environmental commitment. The site gets 6,000 unique visitors every day, and approximately 8,000 users are eco:Ville members, according to AKQA.
