The wall-size mural in Lower Downtown — made from a garden-sized plot of live green grass — looks like installation art, but it’s really eco-friendly advertising.
Denver is one of three cities chosen to launch Green Giant’s Green Awards campaign, which will celebrate the best green ideas, initiatives and thinkers in communities across the nation.
The living-grass billboard — which needed to be watered immediately after installation, so it’s not quite so green a concept as Colorado’s high-and-dry climate demands — is part of the “engagement marketing” advertising movement in which sustainable earth resources, from sand and snow to flowers and moss, are used to convey messages.
The idea is to encourage a new way of thinking, using paperless posters, perhaps sculpted from hay or drawn in dust. “It’s designed to be temporary; nothing is long-lived,” said Maikel van de Mortel, co-founder of Element Six Media of Minneapolis, the firm that created the billboard.
The Green Awards campaign debuted in Venice Beach, Calif., with a giant image designed to be seen from the air carved into beach sand.
Philadelphia hosted the second ad, a giant snow mural. The three cities were chosen because of their high commitment to green living.
“In Denver, especially LoDo, people have much more of a green mind-set, and are open to it,” said firm co-founder Bjorgvin Saevarsson.
He grew up in Iceland, and van de Mortel was reared in the Netherlands.
“We grew up somewhat differently,” said van de Mortel. “To us, being green was how we lived.”
They launched careers in marketing and then noticed an art-world trend, with many artists using natural materials.
“Corporations and artists don’t usually go together, but we thought about how we could combine them,” van de Mortel said.
But two years ago, when they started their company and launched the notion of fleeting, temporal campaigns, the idea was a hard sell.
“No one believed it would work,” said Saevarsson. “They said it would be too expensive, and no one would care.”
But companies are realizing that many customers do care, and Green Giant approached them to develop the eco-campaign.
“It’s about giving more to the earth than we take out,” Saevarsson said, “and being respectful to the community that we are offering products in.”
Colleen O’Connor: 303-954-1083 or coconnor@denverpost.com
