A city as a source of the ‘creative spark’. Urban streets as basis for bold and massive campaigns. For many decades, smaller towns and megalopolises have been inspiring advertising agencies behind multiple marketing projects, which on the one hand are targeted at promoting brands and, on the other hand, encourage consumers to compare different cities, unveil creativity and strong dedication to sport, cinema and quests, or even bring rural accents to urban settings. We at Popsop have reviewed global brands’ ad activity during 2010 and first two months of 2011 to see how they’ve been embedding city into their promotions. Now, we are presenting our 3-part study dedicated to the subject. The first section of this review will highlight competitions, cross-city studies, urban sport-related promotions, which have been taking place within big cities around the globe and in a way were dedicated to them.

In the unique ‘One Tonne Life’ project, launched January 19, the Lindells family of four will try to live within the limits of one tonne of carbon dioxide emissions per person per year. The project has been initiated by A-hus, Vattenfall and Volvo Cars, with ICA and Siemens being the project’s specialist industry partners. The family lives in a climate-smart wooden house, use an electric car and turn to advanced energy solutions, which are already available or will become available in the very near future.

Any driver can now find out its true impact on air quality and human health thanks to the launch of a free iPhone App by Volvo, in association with www.cleangreencars.co.uk. The application reveals the toxic emissions of the four pollutants which impact local air quality and human health: carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen, hydrocarbons and particulates.

Professor Harold Mooney of Stanford University in California has been named the recipient of the 2010 Volvo Environment Prize. This year’s prizewinner has for many years been a leading light within research into biological diversity and especially how important it is for the functioning of ecosystem services. This concept has been widely acknowledged in recent years, perhaps mainly due to an international research program, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, where Professor Mooney has played a leading role.

Volvo is continuing «The Naughty Volvo» campaign, launched back in March and dedicated to the Subject60 model, by a study aimed at finding out which of the big European cities is the ‘worst’ one in terms of public behavior. The project, conducted in Berlin, London, Milan, Paris and Madrid, was revolving around ethnographic observations on how people react to the special ‘hidden’ experiments. The aim of the study was to define if people from these capitals have the same attitude to the same things or not.