Also in this report:

– Palmer Jarvis, BBDO clean up: Agencies scoop 12 and seven prizes respectively at seventh annual Lotus Awards p.27

– Vancouver Health Board gets Happy: Irreverent spots promoting condom use are heavy on double-entendre p.28

– Postman rings twice in Boston Pizza spots: Cheers’ John Ratzenberger plays role of pitchman for Canadian pizza chain p.29

– Post-production house runs eye-opening campaign p.30

– B.C. interior increasingly attractive to advertisers p.30

It’s one of the most powerful pieces of creative work to come out of BBDO Vancouver in recent months – and it was done strictly on spec.

The agency was looking for a way to demonstrate the impact of outdoor advertising to one of its clients, the British Columbia Ministry of Forests.

So the creative team came up with a billboard campaign to promote forest fire prevention.

Four boards were mounted, photographed and dismantled, all in a single day. What made it all so unusual was the location: a burned-out forest in the b.c. interior.

British Columbia suffers approximately 3,000 wildfires each year, about half of which are caused by humans – the result of carelessly discarded cigarettes or abandoned campfires.

The ministry traditionally runs a radio campaign between May and September to raise public awareness of the fire season and to encourage prevention of forest fires.

This year, the ministry also wanted to publicize its toll-free B.C. Forest Service telephone number for reporting fires.

The advertising had been handled in-house for a number of years. But Wendy Stewart, provincial fire information officer and manager of communications, says it was time to put some professional polish on the creative. BBDO Vancouver was tapped for the job.

As the provincial government’s agency-of-record, bbdo was familiar with how previous campaigns had been handled.

The agency team suggested radio and print for this year’s campaign, since media needed to be used tactically throughout the summer – particularly on weekends, when the potential incidence of forest fires was higher.

In addition, a 15-sec. sponsorship tag was placed prior to weather reports on two b.c. television stations.

When bbdo began looking at other ways of reaching hikers, campers and other users of b.c. forests, the team came up with several ideas, including the use of billboards in areas that had been burned due to human negligence.

Unfortunately, the money for additional media was not in this year’s budget.

That’s when the agency decided to construct the billboards on its own, to illustrate how a unique advertising vehicle and a strong message can work hand in hand.

The kinds of messages on the boards – ‘Was available in a fresh pine scent,’ ‘See, cigarettes really can stunt growth’ and ‘This campfire story really is scary’ – had a powerful impact when seen in the stark setting of a charred forest.

One of the boards simply featured a photograph of a lush, green forest and a single word of copy: ‘Before.’

‘We took a look at the creative done the year before and it really didn’t talk in an emotional sense,’ says Dean Elissat, account supervisor at BBDO Vancouver.

‘Our strategy was to try to educate the audience not only on how they could prevent wildfires but alsoŠto emphasize why [they should], in an emotional way.’

bbdo’s billboards earned 1996 Lotus Awards in the public service categories, both single and campaign (see story this page).

Elissat says he will propose that the photographs taken of the billboards be used next year to create outdoor advertising for urban areas in b.c.

The agency also created a new themeline for the ministry this year: ‘Please make sure your campfire is out. Just add water. And stir until cold.’

A catchphrase was needed that could be easily remembered, Elissat explains. The line is now used extensively in ministry communications.

Stewart says that bbdo’s radio and print campaign for the ministry this summer proved effective in raising awareness.

‘The number of fires was significantly lower,’ she says. ‘There were periods this summer when we had an extreme fire danger, and we just didn’t see the number of fires we would have experienced in previous years.’