Footage of men and women covered in black oil, and emerging from a swimming pool, are part of a new international ad campaign to sell more wool.
Levy-funded research and marketing group Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) has launched the new ad campaign to highlight the sustainability of wool, compared to synthetic textiles.
The ad, which will run in America, the United Kingdom, France and Australia, depicts people swimming in a pool of black oil, struggling to get out.
When they do finally emerge, they take off their dripping clothes to reveal clean wool products underneath.
AWI said it was based on the insight that "every 25 minutes an Olympic pool's worth of crude oil is used to produce synthetic clothing, which amounts to almost 350 million barrels a year".
AWI CEO John Roberts said they aimed to create consumer awareness around how clothing was produced.
"Everyone's dead keen about sustainability ... and if you want to be true to sustainability you've got to look at what sort of clothes you're wearing and what's the makeup of those garments."
The new ad isn't the first attention-grabbing video devised by the AWI's marketing arm, The Woolmark Company, which also created a 2020 campaign for China featuring a celebrity interviewing three ewes.
That campaign attracted hundreds of millions of views.
Hitting back at labelling proposal
The new ad contradicts proposed European Union sustainability labelling laws, which could see synthetic textiles ranked above natural fibres like wool.
The AWI is part of a campaign called Make The Label Count, which aims to influence how the EU determines garments' eco-credentials.
Mr Roberts said they were trying to move away from the "one size fits all" approach that was currently being proposed.
"This highlights all the good things ... about synthetics and the negatives about wool.
"We're trying to actually set the ledger straight there."
Mr Roberts said the EU's proposed methodology ignored the creation of micro-plastics through synthetic production and did not take into account the biodegradable nature of wool.
"As a textile community, we need to come to some kind of consensus on what is sustainable and what isn't," he said.
Risk of greenwashing
Queensland University of Technology fashion expert Associate Professor Alice Payne said 60 to 70 per cent of clothing was made from synthetic materials and described the new ad as "visceral" and "quite a compelling visual".
"[The ad] speaks to this idea that fossil fuels, they're essentially non-renewable, it comes with those connotations sea birds covered in oil," she said.
Dr Payne expected more businesses to highlight sustainability in marketing going forward, in line with changing consumer trends.
"The challenge of course is though, that when you're being marketed to around this idea of natural, and what is nature, there's a risk of that lending itself to greenwashing...and we're seeing that more around the world," Dr Payne said.
Will consumers pay more?
Wool products are more expensive than synthetic fabrics and there are several other factors consumers could weigh up when trying to shop sustainably.
"I feel consumers to a large extent are quite overwhelmed, there's a lot of different information," Dr Payne said.
"There are all the issues throughout the entire life-cycle of the garment, whether it's how the garments are dyed … whether it's worker welfare.
"Governments and industry are saying we need to have more robust definitions of what's being put forward here."
