In the News
Element Six: Green Buzz
Twin Cities Business Magazine, August 11, 2010
By Gene Rebeck
Maikel van de Mortel’s from the Netherlands; Björgvin Sævarsson’s from Iceland. Both grew up in small towns where recycling and otherwise minimizing one’s environmental footprint wasn’t considered especially “green”—it was (and is) simply what you do, how you live. As Maikel says, “coming from small countries, we learned how to be creative and mindful about how to use what resources we had.”
Both settled in the Twin Cities in the late 1990s. Both started their own marketing businesses. About a year ago, they got together and founded Element Six Media, which uses natural materials to create marketing messages. And they’re both funny—they play off each other almost like a comedy team.
But they’re (playfully) serious about their work. They’re green marketers—practical visionaries who are very thoughtful about the future of marketing and the future of business. Though many U.S. companies have sought to wrap themselves in the green mantle of “sustainability,” for many others, green still has a “treehugger stigma,” Maikel says. “We want to make this mainstream.”
Read the complete Twin Cities Business interview with Element Six Media founders here
Words on the Street
Twin Cities Business Magazine, November 2010
By Gene Rebeck
The founders of Element Six Media want to change the way marketing is done. Heck, they want to change the world. Element Six Media is one of those start-ups you can’t imagine starting up in the predigital age. It’s both virtual and global. Its nerve center and headquarters is a heavy oak table at the Open Book coffeehouse on South Washington Avenue in Minneapolis, a few blocks from the shores of the Mississippi. The table has an appealing sturdiness, and looks older than it actually is—it was originally built for the Magers & Quinn bookstore in Uptown, which sold the table to Open Book a few years back.
The earthy admen: Element Six Media turns snowbanks, water, and volcano dust into ads that go viral
The Line Media, August 11, 2010
By: Dan Haugen
Advertising surrounds the transit commuter. It’s wrapped around trains, back-lit on bus shelter panels, glowing atop taxi cabs, and staring down from billboards. Amid all that noise, what really caught the eyes of people waiting for rides in downtown Minneapolis one day last December were the shapes in the snow.
Maikel van de Mortel and Bjorgvin Saevarsson had made tracks along Nicollet Mall, by the light rail line, and in other areas, using metal stencils to stamp the name and logo of St. Paul nonprofit Fresh Energy into the snow about 1,000 times. It was the first local project of van de Mortel’s and Saevarsson’s Element Six Media, a green advertising firm that builds its campaigns around the use of “earth materials”–snow, sand, water, plants–as well as social media. It didn’t take long for fresh snowfall to bury the duo’s work, but not before they’d made an impression on an estimated 75,000 people walking past.
Read The Line’s complete feature on Element Six media here…
Just how “hipster” is Minnesota?
The Line Media, August 10, 2011
By: Jon Spayde
Recently I’ve been thinking about a little item we ran back in May under our In the News heading: the cool-hunting site BuzzFeed named Minnesota the “most hipster state.” Clicking through to the page reveals that BuzzFeed ‘s rationale for this declaration is both really odd–tongue-in-cheek, actually–and kind of suggestive.
http://www.thelinemedia.com/features/hipsteressay081011.aspx
Eco-Friendly Ads May Grow on You
The Denver Post, February 20, 2011
Is what the Denver Post reported on February 19, referring to TheGreenAwards.com grass mural placed in Denver’s LoDo district, a hip urban area on the North side of downtown. This impressive grass mural sits 30′ wide and 14′ tall. After Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Minneapolis, Denver is the final stop in Green Giant’s TheGreenAwards.com promotion. A unique and completely green advertising campaign, leaving no negative impact to our environment.
To read the full Denver Post article, click here.
Snow Ads
Boing Boing, 2010
By: Bill Barol
Tuesday, Mar 30 They say advertising’s an ephemeral medium, but I’m not so sure. I collect old library-bound volumes of Life magazine, and given proper care (and kept away from the razor-clutching hands of people who want to carve them up and sell them piecemeal on eBay) those magazines have some serious shelf life, and so do the bright colorful ads they contain. And there are any number of websites archiving film, TV and radio ads, from the Internet Archive on down. But an agency called Element Six Media is creating ads that really are ephemeral — as much so as melting snow and drifting sand. It may not be art, exactly, but it sure is arresting. And if the point of advertising is to get you to look, mission accomplished. (Via Inhabitat.)
Eco-Friendly Ads Create Green Buzz
Tonic, March, 2011
To spread the message about The Green Awards™, Green Giant® put up low-impact ads across the US. We’ve told you about The Green Awards™, a new program to honor people who are doing their part for a more sustainable world. The Green Awards program will award a total of $120,000 among 12 Finalists, with four Grand Prize winners taking home $25,000 each.
Ethereal Ads are Printed Right into the Snow
March 29, 2010, Inhabitat
by: Moe Beitiks
Spring might have one foot in the door but we couldn’t resist giving a shout out to Element Six’s “snow ads” that stay in existence just long enough to get their message across and then melt away. That’s right, the self-proclaimed “green media” company offers branding in sand, moss, reverse graffiti, and now, given the pristine surface of freshly fallen powder, snow.