Gore To Media Conference: Help Save Our Planet, Help Us Plan It

ORLANDO - Madison Avenue has been called upon to launch new products, resuscitate ailing brands, turn corporations around, and even elect our nation's leaders. On Wednesday, one of those former leaders, Al Gore, beseeched a roomful of media buyers and planners to help with what undoubtedly is their greatest cause ever: saving our planet. During a keynote at the American Association of Advertising Agencies Media Conference and Trade Show here, the former vice president unveiled plans for a massive advertising collaborative of leading environmental and faith-based organizations to combat global warming, and asked the agency executives to match it "dollar for dollar" with pro bono contributions.

"It is the most serious challenge that our civilization will experience," said Gore, cuing up a ten-minute video presentation showing the ravages of global warming on planet earth.

Gore said the collaborative would kick off with public service ads from the Advertising Council in three weeks, which would be followed by a "large ad buy" breaking in mid-April.

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Gore, who ironically declined to speak with reporters at the conference following his presentation, implied the news media wasn't doing a good enough job of getting the message of global warming out to the American public, and that it was Madison Avenue's job to make up the gap.

"We have to get this complicated information out to the American people. The news media simply does not work the way it used to. You know that better than any other industry," said Gore, adding that he and his wife, Tipper Gore, have pledged all the proceeds from two related media projects--a movie he is producing with Paramount Pictures, and a book being published by Rodale Press-- to the collaborative, to help pay for what he described as a "major advertising purchase over the next three years--a very significant buy."

"Mother Nature is knocking on our door," he said, emphasizing the gravity of the situation, and the need for the ad industry's support.

On a seemingly more prosaic note, Gore, who is also chairman of current affairs cable channel Current TV, said he has enjoyed becoming an "adjunct" member of the advertising and media community, and that he sympathized with the challenges faced by advertisers and media planners and buyers during "a period of unprecedented change for your industry."

On that note, Gore, who has been chided for once saying he played a key role in the creation of the Internet, lobbied strongly for so-called "Internet neutrality," or a public policy that would prohibit Internet service providers from controlling access to content on the Internet.

"I think it's really important, because the Internet is the medium that carries the vitality and energy and independent points of view," he said, sounding more like a politician than a media man. "The Internet should be kept a free and open space so the consumers and the citizens of this country are in control of what they have available."

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