Top 10 Earth Day Promotions

Not as awesome as National Pancake Week or Public-Sleeping Day, but as far as holidays go, Earth Day is a decent holiday. Sure, there are no presents, cakes or even chances to nap in public, but it's still got its upsides. You get to scold co-workers and guilt family members over the daily eco-terrors they commit, which is pretty cool. Plus, though there's no cake, sometimes there are cupcakes, complete with green food dye and those weird colored-sugar crystals, so that's something, right?

Okay, we'll admit that's lame, but how about this? With its anti-establishment edge and sanctimonious permissions, Earth Day is a holiday almost begging for aggressive, guerilla-style physical marketing campaigns. Don't believe me? Check out these 10 Earth Day promotion ideas so fantastic that even a writer with no marketing experience could make them work, I guarantee* it.

*I do not guarantee this. Not even slightly.

10|Provide a client with a few dozen cardboard cutouts of a scowling Al Gore. Help them place the cutouts anywhere they suspect targeted end-users are harming the environment. By trashcans, the company lunchroom, inside their cars or even their homes. For maximum effect, make sure to keep the promotion a secret from the end-users, because nothing says "don't waste water in the shower" like being surprised by the disapproving grimace of a life-sized Al Gore standing in your bath tub.

9| Take all those BPA-based bottles and recycle them into containers for estrogen-replacement pills. This way, all the hormones the plastics naturally emit will just improve the effectiveness of medicines they contain. It's helping the environment, people and the poor corporations who have to unload huge stocks of otherwise poisonous material. Kismet anyone?

8| Green-colored organic tees. To match your client's skin tone to them, tell them a few stories about non-organic cotton harvesting, like how accidental exposure to the pesticides used can give a worker permanent, lifelong asthma.