Please Take Me to a National Park, Daddy

Submitted by Kurt Repanshek on October 3, 2009 - 3:47am

Enticing Americans back into the national parks has been a big priority this year for national park advocates. The following commercial, produced for the National Park Foundation, was praised for its approach.

Here's what AdWeek had to say after reviewing this spot:

Are national parks mainly places in which nature is protected from man and his dreadful works? Or are they mainly places where man (and man's cute little daughters) can go to have high-quality fun? Shunning the humans-are-bad theme that has become a conspicuous strain in modern environmentalism, this spot for the National Parks Foundation (via Modernista, Boston) adopts the second viewpoint. And a good thing, too, as it's much more suited to making ordinary folks feel disposed to "get involved" with the parks. Actually, the voiceover says of the parks that "This is your land" and then asks viewers to "Discover how to get involved and protect what is yours, at nationalparks.org." This notion of human ownership of the land is certainly out of keeping with current eco-piety, but the reference is again a natural way of fostering a sense of individual viewers' stewardship of the parks.