Harrison Ford walks into a brightly lit salon. As chords from Pearl Jam’s “Corduroy” play in the background, Ford says in a serious voice, “When rainforests get slashed and burned,… Click to show full abstract
Harrison Ford walks into a brightly lit salon. As chords from Pearl Jam’s “Corduroy” play in the background, Ford says in a serious voice, “When rainforests get slashed and burned, it releases tons of carbon into the air we breathe.” Ford then faces the camera and takes his shirt off. He continues, “It changes our climate. It hurts.” An image of hot wax quickly transitions to Ford sitting back on a chair. A dark-haired woman begins to apply the hot wax to the middle of his chest. Looking straight ahead, Ford begins, “Every bit of rainforest that gets ripped out over there . . .” He pauses. The salon aesthetician applies a cloth strip over the wax and rips off a sizable chunk of Ford’s chest hair. Ford grimaces in pain and gives a stunned look at his removed hair. He then turns to the camera and continues, “really hurts us over here” (figure 1). The fast-paced thirty-second commercial was a public service announcement (PSA) created by New York–based BBDO, the renowned advertising agency famous for Apple’s 1984 ad as well as awardwinning material for companies like Pepsi and Visa. Commissioned in 2008 by Conservation International (CI), the waxing PSA helped inaugurate “Lost There, Felt Here,” a campaign designed to increase
               
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