Phone Deaths Become Art to Promote Recycling

Indie creative and media agency Enigma has turned tales of the death and destruction of devices into a bold national campaign to reignite mobile phone recycling across Australia for MobileMuster, the telecommunications industry’s mobile phone recycling program.

There are an estimated 13 million broken and unused phones lying forgotten in drawers across Australia, and 96% of a phone’s materials can be repurposed. But awareness of why and how to recycle phones is low. The “However it Dies” campaign is designed to change this and help drive a new wave of recycling behaviour.

To spearhead the campaign, Enigma has collaborated with multidisciplinary artist James Dive to create a series of “Phone Death” art installations within standard oOh!media out-of-home panels.

These interactive mechanical art works dramatise iconic scenarios where phones meet their untimely end, from a dance floor, to taking a spin in a washing machine and a dip in the ocean. Each installation is placed tactically in a contextually relevant location -- near nightclubs, inner city laundromats and the beach.

MobileMuster marketing and communications manager Joel Murray said, “The power of this work is in the engaging way it brings static media to life. A wait at the bus stop becomes a branding and education moment -- there’s no damage you can do to a phone that will make it un-recyclable, and MobileMuster is where you go to recycle old, broken phones. Enigma have come up with the kind of bold creative we’ve been looking for.”

Enigma CCO Simon Lee said, “In a world that’s flooded with flat screen digital experiences, there’s something timelessly engaging about dimensional, mechanical works like these. The proof though, as they say, is in the pudding: minutes after installing the “phone crushing boot” artwork in Marrickville I watched a group of teenagers cluster around the panel to take a look. One of them pressed the button, and as the boot went to work on the end of its piston was heard to say: ‘this is actually cool’. Praise indeed!”

Enigma chief media officer Justin Ladmore added, “It’s in projects like this that our integrated media and creative offering really comes into its own. Bringing this campaign into the world has required seamless collaboration between our two teams, oOh!media and Poly who played an invaluable role in helping us integrate these artworks into standard outdoor panels.”

The next phase of the campaign will launch later this month, including social media.

“True Phone Death” Stories -- leveraging real viral footage of spectacular phone failures, and an OOH campaign including large format roadside, street furniture and train station media, in close to 400 locations across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.