Selling immortality

The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture was our first account when I was Creative Director at Other. As well as doing all their DM appeals, we created various event invitations, programmes and flyers.

This project was one of the most fun: four programme covers for an auction in which you bid for the chance to appear in a book. The participating authors included many stellar literary names: Ian McEwan, Terry Pratchett, Nick Hornby, Zadie Smith, Louis de Bernieres... And the auctions have raised thousands for the charity. The strapline for this particular year's Immortality Auction was "Get into books".

Would you get into a stranger's car?

Of course you would. If, that is, you and the stranger were both members of BAA's Airport Carshare scheme.

There was a serious problem to be solved at BAA's airports. Cars produce their own weight in carbon dioxide every six thousand miles, apparently, and that does nothing for the environment.

With thousands of people employed at BAA's airports, carsharing offered a genuine chance to reduce emissions dramatically. (60,000 people work at Heathrow alone, if you can believe that.) But of course it's not necesarily easy to get people to share cars with complete strangers.

So BAA asked Alter Ego (now David & Associates) to help. And Alter Ego asked me to get involved on the words side. What you see here are the launch posters we did for Airport Carshare: 48-sheets that went up around Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted. (They also featured Alter Ego's brilliant identity for the scheme.) The images were used on leaflets and DM, and we did all sorts of associated materials like 'Magic Key' car fresheners, windscreen sunscreens, memberships cards, keyrings and the like.

The work gave the scheme a warm, witty and engaging personality that acted against all those concerns about sharing your car. Subscriptions flooded in, smashing the target BAA had set us. And the little nodding dogs proved so popular we had to order an enormous box full from the suppliers in the US, so BAA could hand them out to their staff.

(If you can't quite read it, the sticker on the Beetle says "My other cars are a Golf, a Rover and a Fiesta.")