49m: 15 Watts

South Africa is going through an energy crisis. Eskom, the country's sole power supplier, is struggling to meet the growing demand for electricity. To avoid blackouts, the only short-term solution is to get ordinary people to switch off unnecessary lights and appliances. To do this, Eskom launched 49M, a national initiative that asks South Africans to save electricity. But how
can we raise awareness without wasting electricity ourselves through 49M's advertising?
Saatchi & Saqatchi , Johannesburg created a television commercial that literally saves electricity. This is how.Most TV ads use colourful, moving images. To create these images, LED and CRT televisions have to generate heat and light up thousands of tiny LED light bulbs. This commercial uses small, animated copy on a black background that only lights up a small part of the screen. In this way we did not only tell people to save power, we saved power ourselves.