Bob Geldof invites advertisers of unneccessary shit to salve consciences with tiny logo

Bob Geldof and - tonight playing the role of someone who you'd hope would know better - Kofi Annan have flown to Cannes in a bid to try and stop stop climate change by, erm, putting a small logo on their adverts:

In fact, Annan and Geldof want this to be more than a campaign. They want a climate justice movement to be born amid the acres of polished marble and €15 vodka and tonics of the French Riviera and launched an appeal to ad agencies and their clients to place Tck Tck Tck logos on their advertisements. Consumers can then upload their own individual "Tcks" to the campaign website, representing the seconds counting down to Copenhagen and the immediacy of the issue at hand.

I suppose if this was tuts rather than tcks, it might be appropriate - a vague, disapproving but detached noise.

Any similarity between this and Bob's colleague-cum-competitor-for-sainthood Bono's Red campaign, which also somehow tried to make the purchasing of luxury goods seem like a positive act, is entire.

Kofi tries to explain why this is actually going to make a difference and isn't just some tatty greenwash:

"I can't imagine a company that would put a Tck Tck Tck on its ad campaign or website, and continue to operate without [being greener]. Its own staff, its own workers will be reminded what are we doing here."

That's funny. You'd have thought that a half-decade of running an organisation where the least contentious ideas turn into the focus of pointless posturing and sabre-truth tiger-rattling rows would have made Kofi a bit more cynical, or perhaps realistic. But given how oil companies are quite happy to pump cash both into persuading Congress to let them drill in areas of beauty and running ads stressing how green they are, I don't think I can share Annan's hopes.