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Earth Day origins
In 1999, Advertising Age magazine compiled a list of the best advertising campaigns of the century. Many of their selections occurred in the 1960s; an era that many consider an advertising golden age. The AMC television series Mad Men quite accurately depicts New York’s Madison Avenue during that time period. Atop the magazine’s list is Volkswagen’s Think Small campaign that launched late in 1959 and ran for more than a decade. The campaign slogan, Think Small, was the work of Julian Koenig while at the firm Doyle Dane Bernbach. Koenig is a legendary copywriter who eventually co-founded the firm Papert Koenig Lois. He’s responsible for the now famous tag line – Timex: It takes a licking and keeps on ticking. His genius was making the complex look easy. He was a master at boiling down product attributes to their essential and developing catchy memorable phrases that resonate with audiences. His work seems effortlessly timeless.
Julian Koenig
He is also credited with naming an event celebrating its fortieth anniversary today – Earth Day. The story goes something like this. Koenig was a member of the Earth Day organizing committee, the event was planned to take place on April 22, Koenig’s birthday – Earth Day rhymes with birthday – that easy. Thank goodness organizers didn’t go with their initial name – National Environment Teach-In. Fortunately, smart marketing won. The name is as memorable and meaningful today as it was forty years ago.
Late in 1969, U.S. Senator from Wisconsin Gaylord Nelson delivered a presentation to a small group in Seattle, WA where he proposed an idea for a national teach-in dedicated to environmental issues. Coastal damage caused by a devastating oil spill near Santa Barbara, CA earlier that year left a lasting impression which moved him to action. The activism and demonstration tinged decade of the 1960s was coming to a close, but Senator Nelson knew that environmentalism interest begun with Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring was beginning to gain momentum. In his opinion, the pace wasn’t fast enough and national awareness of natural depredation needed a jump start.
“I am convinced that all we need to do to bring an overwhelming insistence of the new generation that we stem the tide of environmental disaster is to present the facts clearly and dramatically,” Senator Nelson declared from the floor of the U.S. Congress a month after his Seattle presentation. “To marshal such an effort, I am proposing a national teach-in on the crisis of the environment to be held next spring on every university campus across the Nation.”
US Senator Gaylord Nelson and Denis Hayes
To successfully bring off an event the size he envisioned, the Senator enlisted the help of Denis Hayes. A the time, Hayes was a Harvard graduate student who was so moved by a New York Times article about Senator Nelson and the planned event that he traveled to Washington DC to get involved. He was hoping to play some role, but was asked to drop out of school and run the national operation. Hayes later went on to co-found the Green Seal certification program and was their first executive director. Between the two of them, and countless others, they took the event from inception to fruition in six months.
A grassroots event of such scale had never been produced before. An estimated 20 million people attended rallies, lectures, protests, and educational events at thousands of schools, parks, and community centers throughout the country that first year. Today, Earth Day is celebrated in 174 countries and is the most celebrated secular holiday in the world. I decided to focus my blog post today on events, people, and interesting facts behind the first Earth Day because its origins are important to remember. They demonstrate how a few people with a good idea can make big things happen. Forty years have passed, but there’s no less urgency regarding environmental issues. There have been successes, but planetary degradation has advanced even faster, and that makes it seem like we’re losing ground. Those who have little concern for the environment have been rather successful with their continued polluting, wasting, and destroying. Earth Day may be more important today than it ever has been. One thing that saddens me is how many manufacturers and retailers with hardly a green bone in their bodies are attempting to tap into consumer interest.
In 1970, opponents suggested the date had been selected because it marked the 100 anniversary of Vladimir Lenin’s birth. It was just as easy back then as it is today for those with a casual grasp on reality and the tendency to see conspiracy everywhere to view concern for the environment as a communist plot. Actually, the date was selected for much less sinister reasons. Since the target audience was college students, it had to occur during the school year, preferably in the spring, late enough to be after spring break, but before final exams. The week of April 16 through 21 was the logical choice. I’m sure Lenin would agree.
What are you doing today?
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