How do you visualise the appetite for transformational change? This ad for B&Q shows how

Advertising’s job is to powerfully secure our emotions, in favour of a product or service, in a competitive marketplace. So we’ve never found it surprising that they often stumble upon the most extraordinary imagery and symbolism, in that relentless search. Our question is always: can these persuasive, engaging powers be used to communicate the urgency of our climate and social crises?

Take this latest ad for the D-I-Y store B&Q, made by the Uncommon ad agency. As Campaign magazine reports, it involved a 24-tonne, four-storey rotating house, which symbolises the protagonist’s discovery that she is pregnant. Her negotiation of that news is represented by her clambering adroitly over her house, literally “flipping” over.

The strategic intent of the ad is to get viewers ready for the strains and stresses of interior decoration and home improvement - hardly system-bending. But like the Chobani ad we profiled a few weeks ago, perhaps we can look at this production in a decommodified way.

The lifestyle on the otherside of the house flipping over might not just be full of new objects, but could answer our Monday blog this week, and its call for reduced consumption to meet climate targets.

We’re going to repeat our occasional challenge to creatives in the advertising and marketing industries: can you lend your imaginative and metaphorical powers to some of the agendas we pursue at The Alternative Global? With no budget, but all the idealism you need? If so, please contact us here.