The Knights of the Scorched Earth - viral campaign concept
Sometimes we create work for a client which doesn't get to go ahead for one reason or another. The Knights of the Scorched Earth is one of those ideas which never saw the light of day, but we had a lot of fun coming up with the concept, and wanted to share the work that has gone into it.
The brief
Sheffield Is My Planet, the city’s environmental campaign site, was one of the key sponsors of the Tramlines music festival held in Sheffield over the summer. We were asked to create a viral campaign to highlight SIMP’s sponsorship of the event, and raise awareness of the advice and promises which SIMP provide on their site.
The idea
We came up with the concept of a heavy metal rock band who were a grotesque representation of a life of deliberate over-consumption and excess - The Knights of the Scorched Earth. The campaign was based around the story that they were furious at not being booked to headline Tramlines due to their environmentally-unfriendly lifestyle.
The campaign was to build the band’s own website showing off their excessive lifestyle, such as an individual tour bus for each member of the band, a world tour which criss-crossed the globe on a daily basis, and ice for their drinks flown in each day from the North Pole. This was to be contrasted with SIMP advice on how actually it only takes small steps which don’t have to affect your lifestyle in order to have an impact on your personal CO2 footprint.
The campaign was designed to extend to Facebook and Twitter - with profile pages for the individual members of the band, and ongoing status updates leading up to the event showing the band’s excessive lifestyle, always referencing their “arch enemies” SIMP and campaign to be allowed to play at Tramlines.
Exaggerating the scale of excess, contrasted with the simple changes of the SIMP campaign was supposed to get across a serious message in an entertaining, bitesized, and shareable way.
Sadly, the band’s “Burn the Sky” tour may circle the globe on a regular basis, but will never come to South Yorkshire; the “Flaming Halo” (the band’s private jet) won’t be landing nearby; and the sound of a thousand generators powering the loudest guitar solo on record will never echo round Sheffield’s seven hills. You’ll just have to enjoy these screenshots instead.
