A long time ago an Italian colleague of mine once said he found people like to use ‘sorry’ so much in advertising in the UK. It was true; every now and then you come across with campaigns that ride on this sentiment. I am sure everyone still remembers the ‘sorry’ campaign run by the Evening Standard early this year.

To coincide with the Copenhagen summit, Greenpeace has created a campaign featuring ten images of world leaders, including Barack Obama and Nicholas Sarkozy saying ‘sorry’ for failing to prevent climate change.

I fear this campaign not only did not try to understand the expectation of the ‘audience’, it also has very little insight into the issue in question. The ten posters have been placed in Arrivals at Copenhagen airport. May be what it had served is simply to give the arriving world leaders a kind of cue-card on what to express in the conference.

Advertising or any form of communication is useless if it does not ‘move products’ or in this case does not have any positive whatsoever on the issue.