Big buses and toast mountains

Global financial meltdown, job losses on production-lines and more tumbleweed than customers in car showrooms; with all the big news at the moment you could be forgiven for having missed the week’s really important story.

The motor insurer that gave the world those ghastly pink Sheilas, announced it had gone green.

In an upbeat statement, Esure heralded its ‘major environmental campaign’ taking in three sites across the UK.

And to help thickie-journalists grasp the magnitude of the undertaking, they painted some pretty pictures. Using very impressive numbers.

Waste capable of filling eight double-decker buses, had been sent for recycling rather than being dumped in landfill, it said.

Thanks to a crackdown on unnecessary printing and photocopying, 179 trees had also been saved from the lumberjack’s axe.

On the energy front, the PR creatives went to town; 12 million slices of bread could be toasted with the power savings made from turning off lights and computers. Brilliant!

The statement should have concluded – “and that’s more than enough cobblers to keep Clarks the Shoe Shop supplied for a year.” But it didn’t.

Esure staff would surely have squirmed if they’d seen a draft of this dribbling greenwash.

The 40-strong team of ‘Environmental Champions’ probably believed they were doing the right thing helping delivering a template for change, not an excuse for a bit of ill-thought out PR.

They certainly deserve praise for helping save the company so much money ….I mean so many of the planet’s trees.

Thinking about it, isn’t there something ironic about an insurance company that makes silly claims? Isn’t that what their customers are supposed to do?

Esure has one more important claim – and it’s worthy of a campaign fronted by Alan Partridge.

It has “secured one of the UK’s most iconic TV sponsorships.”

Premiership? Coronation Street? Big Brother?

Nah, the ITV National Weather.

Aha!