‘Cars NOT Carbon’ Competition To Promote Greener Autos

LONDON - The Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership is launching a ‘greener’ motoring marketing competition targeting professional marketers and educational sectors.

The competition is designed to engage marketers, students and industry stakeholders in the production of compelling creative concepts based on ‘real world’ cars and fuels and on greener travel behaviour. The winning work will be viewed by senior industry executives from the motor, fuels and related industries and will be showcased at the LowCVP’s annual conference on June 28th.

The Cars NOT Carbon competition will be judged by a group of leading representatives of the advertising and communications industries, working alongside environment specialists and experts from the motoring industry. There is a panel of 12 judges and a chair including John Elkington, Founder and Chief Entrepreneur – Sustainability; Bruce Haines, Group CEO - Leo Burnett; Mark Hall, Marketing Director – Toyota and Andy Taylor, Director of Sustainability & Corporate Citizenship - Ford Europe.

Marketing communications agencies nationwide and students on relevant educational courses are invited to produce creative ways of communicating greener motoring messages with submissions made across various marketing disciplines and media channels. The campaigns will be judged on their originality, creativity and effectiveness of their message. It is hoped that the competition will lead to the production of fresh ideas and persuasive communication around the issue of sustainable mobility in the road transport sector.

The Cars NOT Carbon competition comes in the wake of the European Commission’s new proposals to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from new cars and vans sold in the European Union, and will form the centrepiece of the LowCVP’s high profile conference on the 28th June 2007 in London. The conference will focus on communication and marketing approaches designed to encourage the purchase of lower carbon vehicles and fuels, greener methods of driving and alternatives to the use of private motor transport. Ultimately, it should also engage and encourage manufacturers to offer greener models and to adopt greener practices.

The LowCVP is a partnership of nearly 250 organisations from the automotive and fuel industries, Government, academia, environmental NGOs and road user groups. The Partnership was established with Government funding in 2003 to help accelerate the shift to low carbon vehicles and fuels.