Focused on linking super-pollutants to health and lifestyle impacts, The Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) aims to inspire a global push for stronger action and cooperation on super-pollutants by bringing the issue to life in bold and entertaining ways.
At Climate Week NYC, CCAC and Purpose launched ‘NOW WE CAN’ with a suite of innovative communications strategies to bring these super-pollutants to life in a bold animated universe. As part of this communications initiative, director duo KITCHEN designed the four super-pollutant characters and brought them to life in a 90 second animated film and suite of Out-Of-Home posters, which were displayed across New York during Climate Week. The communications assets also include social media content, audio soundbits, and a set of promotional materials featuring the characters.
To maintain a balance between grotesque and cute, KITCHEN crafted four horrible and destructive, yet cuddly and funny, creatures to represent the four super-pollutants, each as their own ‘species’. KITCHEN’s signature imaginative and vivid storytelling, dynamic transitions, and spirited character design perfectly balance the warmth and humour needed to create awareness and pique interest in this complex environmental issue.
“During New York Climate Week, we needed to shine the light on super-pollutants, and highlight the immense - but often accepted - impact of them on our health, lifestyles, and the climate. In this work, we have used creativity to explain a traditionally technical and complicated issue in an entertaining, easy to understand, and hopefully memorable way. KITCHEN’s ingenious illustrations gave personality to our irritating super-pollutant characters to life and is some of the bravest work in the air pollution space. We hope it convinces the climate sector that we don’t have to put up with super-pollutants and by supporting the work of the CCAC, their impact on our health and planet can be mitigated.” said Charlotte Wood, Gabrielle Choo and Alexandra Callaway, Purpose.
Super-pollutants - including black carbon, methane, hydrofluorocarbons and tropospheric ozone - are responsible for 45% of global warming and impact our health, lifestyles and exacerbate climate change. Yet they are often overlooked in climate discussions, namely because their scientific nature can make them a complicated and technical issue to understand. Purpose, in collaboration with the UNEP-convened Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC)and UN Environment Programme raises awareness of the impact of super-pollutants and the brilliant, continuously evolving range of solutions that we as a global climate community can put into place to tackle them.