Hopenhagen was an initiative by the International Advertising Association in support of the United Nations at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP-15) in Copenhagen December 2009. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon UN asked for help from the international advertising industry at Davos in January 2009. Hopenhagen took the form of an international public relations campaign culminating with an installation in the public square in central Copenhagen during the COP-15 summit. Hopenhagen created a feel good façade where corporate sponsors were helping governments save the world. Meanwhile, many of the thousands of climate activists congregated in Copenhagen for the summit found Hopenhagen so offensive that they made the campaign and installation itself an object of their protests. Hopenhagen is a classic example of corporate appropriation of people’s movements and the subsequent neutralization of the messages demanding structural change and social justice. As such, Hopenhagen embodies the conflict within the concept of design activism itself. While design functions predominately as a driver of consumption, consumerism, globalization and unsustainable behavior; activism is concerned with social injustice and environmental devastation. Activists struggle to combat the forces of globalization by forming social movements and resisting corporatisation of the commons and everyday life; designers are normally servant of corporate entities. These two forces are integrally at odds.

1. www.eco-labs.org

2. Design Activism and Social Change
Design History Society Annual Conference
September 2011
Hopenhagen
& Design Activism
as an Oxymoron
Jody Joanna Boehnert
University of Brighton
AHRC supported PhD candidate
EcoLabs - www.eco-labs.org
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3. Hopenhagen was an initiative by the International
Advertising Association in support of the United
Nations at the UN Climate Change Conference
(COP-15) in Copenhagen December 2009.
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4. Many of the climate activists in Copenhagen
for the summit found Hopenhagen so offensive
that they made the campaign and installation
itself an object of their protests.
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5. Contents
Introduction
Why?
History?
What was Hopenhagen?
Who was responsible?
Who was against it?
Exactly why Hopenhagen was a problem:
1. Co-opting people’s movements
2. Propaganda
3. De-politicization
4. Exclusion
5. Misinformation
Lessons for design activists
Conclusion
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7. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
UN asked for help from the international
advertising industry at Davos in January
2009. Bai Ki-moon described the campaign’s
intentions:
to create a strategy to harness
all the brilliance, innovation
and creativity that the
marketing industry is known
for…it should be THE Climate
Change Communication
Initiative. We hope it will be a
game-changer. It will explain,
educate and ask for global
engagement leading to success
in Copenhagen.
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8. Hopenhagen was unveiled at the Cannes
Lions International Advertising Festival
June 2009 followed by an “aggressive”
international campaign.
It was made by:
• The UN
• The International Advertising Association
• Oglivy (a global adveristing and PR agency)
• Oglivy Earth
• Ketchum
• Colle+McVoy
• GroupM
• Havas.
• website by Zazengo
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9. What was Hopenhagen?
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11. Six million people signed the Hopenhagen petition on the website
and become ‘citizens of Hopenhagen’.
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12. The international public relations campaign culminated
massive outdoor presence on plastered in Copenhagen
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during the COP-15 Summit, December 2009.

13. The central focus was an installation in the main square with a combination of artwork, exhibition
featuring ‘sustainability’ innovations and corporate advertising. A giant globe displayed projection
updates on the progress of the summit. Exhibits demonstrated green technologies.
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14. ‘Best Green Third Sector Campaign’ - Green Awards 2010
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15. The explicit aim of the Hopenhagen campaign was
to solve the environmental crisis:
‘Hopenhagen is a movement, a moment and
a chance at a new beginning. The hope that
in Copenhagen this December – during the
United Nations Climate Change Conference
– we can build a better future for our planet
and a more sustainable way of life. It is the
hope that we can create a global community
that will lead our leaders into making the
right decisions. The promise that by solving
our environmental crisis, we can solve our
economic crisis at the same time.’
The implicit aim of the Hopenhagen campaign was
about displaying corporate partneres as good global
citizens.
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16. An observer who was not aware of the dynamics and political struggles going on in the climate movement
might be led to believe that Hopenhagen represented the interests of the people’s climate movements.
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17. Hopenhagen - December 2009 Climate Camp UK - Summer 2009
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19. A ‘Bottle of Hope’ advert conflated
the social movements gathered in
Copenhagen with Coca-Cola.
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20. Hannah Schling in Corporate Watch:
The case of ‘Hopehagen’ illustrates how the
triad of Corporation – PR Company – and NGO
operates to create and then ‘engage’ with the
‘citizen consumer’ in the wake of effective global
critiques and boycott movements.
Summer 2011:17
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21. • Coke drained up to a million litres of water a day from the aquifer
in Phichimada. Social movements resisted and closed the Kerala
plans, Kerala High Power Committee ruled that Coca-cola was liable
for $48 million damages.
• Hopenhagen – change of PR strategy! Coke PR attempting to
position itself as concerned corporate citizen, partnering with large
NGOs to ‘raise awareness’.Suddenly Coke is speaking as experts on
‘water sustainability’ & Coke’s CEO was one of few key Fortune 500
CEOs at COP15!
• Partnering with WWF – announced aim to go ‘water neutral’
in 2007, water efficientcy and offsetting (GREENWASH ARERT!)
£15million to WWF river campaign, to conserve major rivers (but
does nothing to conserve the water in the viscinity of the Coke
plants).
www.eco-labs.org Hannah Schling in Corporate Watch, Summer 2011:17

22. Conflict between explicit vs. implicit messaging.
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23. Oglivy Earth
• 'Experts' at avoiding greenwash: 'brands need our greenwash compass more than ever...'
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24. NGO – WWF
• Facilitates image management for corporate sponsors.
• Greenwashing including Earth Day 2011 ‘Rooftop Rainforest’ with SkyTV
Earth Day 2011 with SkyTV on the roof of Westfield shopping mall in London
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25. Exactly why Hopenhagen was a problem:
1. Co-opting people’s movements
2. Top – down messaging parading as ‘engagement’
3. Exclusion of critical voices
4. De-politicization of political material
5. Distortion of knowledge and misinformation
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26. 1. Co-opting people’s movements (appropriating dissent)
The campaign created divisive tension between those that wanted to
make a climate movement and those who wanted to harness that energy
to achieve corporate objectives.
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27. 2. Top – down messaging parading as ‘engagement’
While attempting to create the illusion of a bottom up initiative, advertising
agencies designed Hopenhagen as a idealised vision of what a new climate
movement might look like to deliver pre-packaged to the people. Top-down
propoganda approaches audiences as passive consumers whose role is the
purchase of slightly greener consumer product.
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28. 3. Exclusion of critical voices
In an arena with contested information the capacity to input, analyze and
debate is vital. Campaigns on social or environmental issues should open up
space to allow for public debate rather than deliver corporate messaging.
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29. 4. De-politicization of political material
Missing from the campaign and exhibition was any sense of the intense
conflict and power struggle and contested nature of the policy opinions on
topic of climate change.
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30. 5. Misinformation and distortion of information
A climate campaign should help audiences make well-informed decision.
Information about complex issues of climate change needs to reflect the fact that
many topics such as bio-fuels, air travel and carbon trading are highly contested
issues within environmental movements and it is disingenuous to ignore this
debate.
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31. The Hopehagen campaign sent conflicting
sets of messages and was highly divisive in
an already heavily contested landscape.
Social marketers lack a critical position
about how corporate power perpepuates
environmental problems.
By ignoring these conflicts the Hopenhagen
campaign itself was complicit with the
systemic drivers of climate change.
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32. Possible lessons for communicators and designers navigating social and environmental campaigns?
Lessons
1. Acknowledge the Political
Neutrality or disengagement in a political context is a capitulation to (corporate) power.
2. Social Marketing
Social marketing serves corporate agendas by functioning entirely within the framework of the market.
3. Design ≠ Design Industry
Design as a field of practice is oriented towards more socially beneficial goals than the design industry.
4. No Logos
Public spaces oriented towards education and informing political decision-making should be clear of
advertising.
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33. Kristian Buus
Jody Joanna Boehnert
University of Brighton / EcoLabs
jjboehnert@gmail.com
Many thanks to Nancy Levinson for her comments on an early draft of this paper
and to Hannah Schling from Corporate Watch for her article on Hopenhagen.
Thanks to photographers Kristian Buus, Jan Slangen and Jonannesen. Last but not least,
thanks to the climate activists who pitched these tents in protest at Hopenhagen.
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