Lorax to the rescue…!

The Lorax has done more for the environmental movement than countless, forgettable marketing efforts… why is that?

Many of our clients understandably wish to brag about their achievements by citing statistics... but statistics don't change minds and provoke action. It takes more... it takes an engaging story and an endearing character.

In 1970, Theodore Geisel was suffering from terrible writer’s block. Geisel, better known to most of us as Dr. Seuss, had just organized with his neighbors in California to prevent the destruction of a grove of eucalyptus trees. Fired up by this experience, he was attempting to pen an environmentally minded children’s book. But everything he tried to read for inspiration, he later said, was “dull,” “full of statistics,” and “preachy.”

In autumn, to get his mind off things, his wife Audrey took him on a trip to the Mt. Kenya Safari Club. The change of scenery worked: One day, after he watched a herd of elephants cross the peak, “the logjam broke,” Geisel later wrote. “I wrote 90% of [The Lorax] that afternoon,” on the side of a laundry list… the rest is history.