Use Electricity Wisely
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 11. 4.07
We don't think much of ugly, power-sucking billboards, but this one from South Africa's Eskom delivers its message. ::EcoStreet
Follow @TreeHugger on Twitter & get our headlines with @TH_rss!
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- Six Soothing Summer Beauty Treatments—Fresh from the Farmers' Market
- Your Idle Computer Can Save Lives
- The Green Message Behind Michael Jackson's Death
- Green Your Bikini Waxing Routine with Soy, Pine Sap and Organic Bikini Wax
- Obama's Posse Says: Paint Your Roof White
- 7 Great Weekend Solar Power Projects
Simple and direct. This billboard should get an advertisement award.
That's great. What type of light do they use on those, anyway? Halogen? Mercury vapor? Incandescent? Flourescent?
Maybe a large enough LED array would be good. Long term operation, low power consumption.
very clever ad!
South African advertising are the masters of using billboards. A local cellphone company once had a "Tell someone" campaign that they were running. The billboards for it were put up upside-down...
Don't know if Eskom will be able to afford any more like this though, they stalled all new development for the past 10 years and have had to resort to load-shedding while they increase their infrastructure - wind, solar and nuclear. A group of companies are now taking them to court for 1 Billion in lost revenue.
Really smart ad, i wonder why more companies don't do such.
Clever ad indeed. What do they do to it in the day ? Cover it up ?
awesome ad ...
i dunno about an award ... but this should be mentioned more in the news ...
honorable mention or something ... hehe ...
reall kewl ad ...
They use High Pressure Sodium or Metal-Halide lamps, both of which are high-voltage, high efficiency.
Fantastic Ad... Certainly not a 'dim' idea.
http://www.worldsbrainiest.com
Already seen here :
http://www.fubiz.net/blog/index.php?2007/09/06/1270-eskom-electricity
I live in South Africa and the fact is they dont have enough power to run the other 3 lights.
Righto
very clever ad
indeed. I live in south africa. Good add, but the truth is Eskom refused to do any infrastructure upgrades in the last 10 years and now we they simply dont have enough power, we the public are forced to be subjected to 'load shedding' (certain areas get their power cut off for x amount of hours). Eskom are already facing billion dollar law suits.
The Billboard was done by a South African Paul Sanders, he works for Ogilvy Cape Town as a creative head. The billboard has won top awards for its creative genius. For more great advertising go to Ogilvy Cape Town!
very creative ad !
It's amazing how this stuff travels through the internet, I've seen this on yet another blog about 3 days ago, anyway... It's great that South Africa is getting noticed, I'm so happy!
But as people has said before... Eskom can't manage to leave those lights on without going to load sharing. Instead they're choosing to build more coal power stations... Sad.
With nearly 50% efficiency, why not Solar? Because money is more important.
Other way to used: www.Gooachi.com ¡Life Guaranteed!
That is truly awesome. Be clever and get your message across.
Awesome advert but its sad that this creativity comes from a crisis that south africa is currently facing.
What energy company in the world advertises to safe or use energy wisely.....it would be going against their shareholder.
Now what is upsetting about this whole situation is that Eskom is forced to spend million (I know this because as a south african resident I see much more advertising happening and i do know the cost bein gin advertising myself) on advertsiing to safe energy instead of pumping this money into energy generation of using it directly for energy saving projects.
It has become to acceptable in south Africa to say sorry and appologies than to actually act against it what has been done wrong.
It might be a great advert but it should not be on this website or associated with anything regarding energy efficiency and savings.
yeah this was in the top 10 yesterday. people bury all the Ron Paul stuff and not shit that was up yesterday.
Surely delivers the message. There is electric power crisis in some parts of Africa. Case study of Nigeria, in a whole day (24 hours) there can be electric power for as little as 3 to 6 hours only.
we are thinking of moving our african online tv company to another location because of this electric power crisis that you hardly hear of in the media
Thats what I call smart advertising. Its just like the comercials on TV, the smart and funny comercial i tend to pay attention on. The standard sale advertisments I dont even hear.