Sustainability and environmental points have been part of South by Southwest’s focus for greater than a decade—and this yr was no totally different, with manufacturers like Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia and Slack bringing inexperienced messaging to the Texas capital by way of extra inventive mediums.

Since former U.S. vice chairman Al Gore gave a keynote on local weather and the long run in 2013, the competition has included local weather in numerous capacities with greater than 300 climate-related periods in whole, with local weather change-specific tracks starting in 2019.

Clear Creatives partnered with Ben & Jerry’s to provide out free ice cream to attendees, providing flavors that known as out the greenwashing messages from main oil and gasoline firms. Patagonia kicked off its 50-year anniversary marketing campaign at SXSW, which is concentrated on supporting activism, aware consumption and connection to nature by way of sport. Slack, which created its largest activation so far for the competition, put sustainability on the middle of its choices round the right way to construct and reuse experiential advertising and marketing supplies.

Scooping out ‘fossil gas lies’

With an ice cream truck parked on East sixth Road only a brief stroll from downtown Austin, Texas, the place most of SXSW’s official programming resides, the Clear Creatives workforce handed out free scoops of Ben & Jerry’s to anybody strolling by—official badge-holders or most people.

Clear Creatives, a marketing campaign launched in 2020 by government director Duncan Meisel and Fossil Free Media’s Jamie Henn, goals to finish the advert trade’s relationship with fossil fuels.

Over the primary weekend of SXSW, individuals had been reintroduced to acquainted flavors from Ben & Jerry’s with new titles and descriptions that identified the shortcomings in Massive Oil’s local weather plans whereas additionally calling out the promoting and PR businesses which have helped vitality manufacturers promote these plans to the general public.

“We wished to succeed in individuals we haven’t had an opportunity to talk to within the inventive trade in a manner that was approachable and informative,” Meisel defined. “Hopefully [we] gave them some data they hadn’t considered earlier than about fossil gas polluters and the best way that they’re impacting the planet.”

On March 12, the group hosted a panel in entrance of the ice cream truck, which included Kristy Drutman, local weather creator and founding father of the Inexperienced Jobs Board; Brian O’Kelley, founder and CEO of Scope3; and Sam Hornsby, founder and CEO of Triptk, a Havas company that was the primary holding company-owned store to signal the Clear Creatives pledge.