Creative Inspiration

Explore how advertisers, media & marketers have responded to a new narrative of a good life: one of connectedness, not of consumption.

Ads for the Future 

Since 2021, we’ve worked with creative agencies, communities & student groups gathering responses to an unusual creative brief positioning the future - the year 2030 - as their client. 

In this brief, creatives are tasked with advertising a future where feeling connected - to self, to others and to nature - is the bedrock of a good life, instead of material consumption. 

THE AGENCY FOR NATURE

Teaming up with creatives from top London agencies, we created the first advertising agency for life on Earth.

Iris & MG OMD develop integrated campaign to Reclaim the Commercial Break  

The campaign cuts through the ‘consumption’ noise by subverting advertising tropes to disrupt people’s auto-pilot behaviour and make them reflect on how connection with self, others and nature are what really matters.

Read more about the latest TV ad ft. comedian Simon Amstell and the iconic Piccadilly Lights takeover.

 

Watch ‘the Good Advert’

The Reclaiming the Commerical Break campaign included ‘The Good Advert’, the first TV ad with a conscience, voiced by comedian Simon Amstell - which aired on Channel 4 in November 2023. 


 

Creatives for Climate and WeAre8 make Ads for the Future 

In partnership with the global Creatives for Climate community and WeAre8 social platform, we gathered hundreds of submissions from independent creatives & influencers, sharing new & original visions of a future good life. 

These contributed to a pop-up Exhibition of the Future, held at the Tate Modern for Purpose Disruptors’ Earth Day Summit, in April 2023. 

See our selected shortlist in the gallery below.

  • Pete Ashworth – Creatives for Climate

  • Maya Adams - Creatives for Climate

  • Laura Costello & Fiona O’Grady THINKHOUSE - Creatives for Climate

  • Sophia Stöhr, Christian Leban and Tessa Huber from RAWTY - Creatives for Climate

  • Ellie Foster - Creatives for Climate

  • Lee Boulton - Creatives for Climate

  • Ursula Pereira & Sylvan Hillebrand from Harriman Steel - Creatives for Climate

  • Laku Davies - WeAre8

  • Oriana Jermide - WeAre8

  • Andrew Warner - WeAre8

  • Margarita Barbieri - WeAre8

  • Ami Laura Luck - WeAre8

 

Falmouth & Bournemouth Universities promote citizens’ visions of connectedness 

Advertising and design students at Falmouth & Bournemouth Universities participated in a unique challenge conceptualising citizen visions of a good life, as unearthed in our citizen research. 

The research unearthed 9 key shifts, including moving from the rat race to a slower pace, and from “take take take” to doing more with less. 

These artworks were selected to feature in our Exhibition of the Future, held at the Tate Modern for Purpose Disruptors’ Earth Day Summit, April 2023. 

  • Celia Dipple – Falmouth University

  • Jenna Thoresson - Falmoiuth University

  • Jackie Wong - Falmouth University

  • Lauren Perriam - Falmouth University

  • Tim Street – Falmouth University

  • Ellie Wheal – Bournemouth University

  • Fraser Nyland – Bournemouth University

  • Bethan Harris, Gabriella Fisher & Flora Searle – Bournemouth University

  • Kayleigh Legrand & Millie Smith – Bournemouth University

  • Emma Dodds – Bournemouth University

Top agencies premiere new “Ads for the Future” for Glasgow’s COP26  

In 2021, we invited leading creative agencies Iris, McCann & Gravity Road to develop 30 second TV ads in response to the Client 2030 brief. 

Each agency took on the challenge of an 8 week sprint to develop innovative, humorous and inspiring takes on an alternative future. 

Inspiration index
“Less is more”
“Less is more”

"Less is More" is an immersive audio experience that cleverly peels back the layers of sound to reveal how the Good Life we’re all seeking has been obscured by the frenetic way we live today.

It’s me you (Ft. Alice Levine)
It’s me you (Ft. Alice Levine)

Starring British radio and television presenter, narrator and comedian Alice Levine, this film brings the future forward in a really personal, humorous way through time travel.

Good stuff
Good stuff

"Good Stuff" brilliantly demonstrates our addiction to ‘stuff’ – the mass consumerism we are all consumed by. It then reveals what the actual Good Stuff is in life – time with others, time in nature, time doing the things we love.

“To change our relationship to the physical world – to end an era of profligate consumption by the few that has consequences for the many – means changing how we think about pretty much everything: wealth, power, joy, time, space, nature, value, what constitutes a Good Life, what matters, how change itself happens.” 

- Rebecca Solnit -