Made you look didn’t it! Did you think the above was telling you to “[BLEEP] OFF”? It says, “Flick Off,” as in flick off the power when not in use.

There’s a good chance quite a few of you had to do a double-take or look a little closer.  That’s exactly what Roots wants you to think when you see it on a t-shirt worn by a friend or even a random passerby.  The image above is part of Roots campaign to make the environment better off by conserving energy and make people become more conscious about taking better care of the environment.

For those of you unfamiliar with Roots, that’s okay.  It’s a Canadian brand that hasn’t quite made its way into the cerebral real estate of American consumers yet.  “Roots is Canada’s leading lifestyle brand known around the world for its wide range of quality leather goods, clothing and accessories.” (Source: www.roots.ca)

I LOVE Roots’ “FLICK OFF” campaign.  Currently, it is my favorite campaign.

1.  It brings conscious awareness to environmentalism without having some extreme nut job scare the bejesus out of you by his or her preaching or rants and raves.

2. The slogan is simple: “FLICK OFF.”  The message is clear.  Flick off (turn off) your lights, power, etc. when they are not in use.

3. The font of “FLICK OFF” makes the brain take notice and most likely do a double take.  It’s creating a memory node with a better chance of registering and storing in your memory bank compared to the hundreds of messages you see daily.

3. The “O” in “OFF” represents a power button.  Pretty clever and relevant to the message. Power requires energy. If you have a Mac computer just look at the power button. It is the same as the “O.”

4. The shirts have more than just the “FLICK OFF” message.  Here are a few of the messages: “STOP THE GLOBAL MELTDOWN: FLICK OFF”; “TAKE ACTION, CHANGE THE WORLD, STOP GLOBAL WARMING, SUPPORT ALTERNATIVE ENERGY: FLICK OFF”

5. The campaign has made me more aware of my own energy usage and has me trying to conserve energy as often as possible.

My only real critique of the campaign is that the “FLICK OFF” slogan doesn’t necessarily make one associate it with Roots.  From a branding perspective, that’s a bit chancy. However, not every piece of apparel needs to slap its name/logo on the front of a shirt. In fact, I prefer most apparel brands don’t do that.  You don’t see a Banana Republic button down with “BANANA REPUBLIC” pasted on the front of it (or on the back for that matter).  On the simple view of it all though, it’s the message being conveyed that is most important not the brand. That’s what Roots has set out to do with its “FLICK OFF” campaign and that’s what it is achieving even if it is only one person at a time.

Adios,

Michael

PS-For the record, I have a few of these shirts and I often have people say to me, “whoa. At first I thought your shirt said something else.”

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Filed under: Campaign Critiques, Green Marketing, Marketing Trends, Strategy, Visual Identity