How badly did DDB Brasil miscalculate in its new campaign for the World Wildlife Fund?
It’s enough to turn your stomach. Or, if you’re a New Yorker who lived through the September 11th attacks, give you a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. An ad, purportedly for the World Wildlife Fund in Brazil, although the U.S. WWF has strongly condemned it — that features dozens of airplanes converging on lower Manhattan, with the line “The Tsunami Killed 100 Times More People Than 9/11.” The ad was first brought to our attention by Gothamist, but was originally picked up by Adweek.com’s AdFreak blog, which reports that the print piece is from the Brazilian arm of the WWF. Later, it was found that the piece was just for spec, turned out by some questionable creative types at a Brazilian Ad agency. The 2004 tsunami was a horrible tragedy that killed over 200,000 people, and probably gets less media attention in the West than it deserves, but that’s no reason to pick a fight with victims of another horrible tragedy. AdWeek called the print ad “tasteless and nightmarish,” but that’s p
