DENVER WATER_ GRASS IS DUMB
PROBLEM
Lawns use more water than the rest of your house combined.
SOLVED.
Armed with that knowledge and a slew of really smart people, we figured out that Denver Water could save one billion gallons—and Denverites would still have their verdant lawns—if only people watered two minutes less. Your dumb lawn wouldn’t know the difference. So we insulted grass, and shazzam!
Denver turned our one billion gallon goal into two billion.
If you pause over nothing else here, let it be the impassioned criticism of our campaign by Dr. Tony Koski near the bottom of the page. So good.
Here's a little tease:
“A bluegrass plant doesn’t have a brain…, thus it can be neither intelligent nor ‘dumb.’ However, the processes by which bluegrass responds to drought stress are so complex that they are still not fully understood by scientists.”
Tagline: Use only what you need.
Awards:
OBIE finalist
Telly Awards silver
ooh.
digital
online IQ test and games to educate consumers on water conservation.
tv
directed by Glenn Martin.
"Lawnmower"
guerrilla
wild postings of dumb grass quotes placed in green spaces across Denver.
rebuttal
this here’s a four-paragraph jeremiad on why grass isn’t dumb, penned by a professor of horticulture at Colorado State University in response to our ad campaign; possibly the best complaint I’ve ever read.
t-shirt
it's a rare feat getting a public utility to print the words "get your hump on" in its messaging, let alone fashioning them into a well-designed* torso garment.
*design by the singularly gifted Caryn Arredondo.
