TOW #11: WWF (Visual)

                On Conan O’Brien’s talk show, the host, Conan, often brings animals from the National Wildlife Federation onto the show to encourage people to support preservation of the animals. Similarly, the below ad from the World Wildlife Fund was released to encourage citizens to preserve something, in this case, Earth. The ad depicts Earth as a scoop of ice cream that’s melting as a symbol of global warming. In the ad, the World Wildlife Fund uses somber colors and symbols to encourage citizens of the planet to preserve it.

                The middle of the ad holds a scoop of Earth ice cream melting, which symbolizes global warming and the disastrous effects associated with the phenomena. Since the Earth is melting, and therefore taking on an irregular shape, viewers are led to believe that global warming can end up destroying their home. The sight of pieces of Earth rolling down the side of the ice cream cone can be described as horrifying even, which shows the urgency in fixing the problem. Additionally, viewers realize that in the same way that a scoop of ice cream melts due to heat, Earth can also “melt” due to the heat from global warming. Since viewers are more familiar with ice cream that global warming, they can relate to the problem, and therefore try to take steps to fix it. In conjunction with the melting sight of the Earth, viewers recognize and understand the problem, which the WWF hopes is enough to encourage people to fix the issue.

                While the viewer understands the problem of global warming through the centerpiece of the text, it is the background that sets the mood. In the ad, dark blue shades are used in the background to create a somber tone, which in turn shows the audience that it is time to fix something on Earth. The dark blue shades used around the ice cream cone itself are very dark, and take up much of the ad space itself. The dark color creates a tone of sadness because that emotion is usually associated with dark shades of color, especially blue. Since the dark colors take up much of the ad, viewers are flooded with the color and therefore the emotion of sadness associated with it. These colors reinforce the somber and scary tone of global warming first created by the sight of the Earth melting, and therefore, make the reason even clearer to the audience to take a stand against the issue.

                Overall, the ad is an extension of the power the global warming has, and by showing the implications of the phenomena, the ad hopes to encourage people to try and fix the problem. This blog post was written on a computer, and is probably being read on one. The first step: Think about the where is power for a computer is coming from. Combustion? That will definitely melt ice cream, and possibly Earth, too.