Project brief: InterfaceFLOR is the largest maker of commercial and residential carpet tile and is relatively well known for Mission Zero, which is the company’s promise to eliminate any negative environmental impact by the year 2020. The company was a pioneer in sustainability and is regarded as an innovative leader in rethinking manufacturing processes and product designs to make them more sustainable.

Greenbuild is the annual conference of the U.S. Green Building Council. The event, which attracts hundreds of exhibitors and tens of thousands of attendees, has become the largest “green” conference in the world. As a result, there’s lots of marketing noise, and even InterfaceFLOR’s inherent leadership position can be obscured. Almost all exhibitors at Greenbuild focus on product claims. InterfaceFLOR and Unboundary recognized that to rise above the fray required fundamentally changing the conversation. It required taking on a much bigger topic that everyone was ignoring: getting off oil. Oil was the proverbial elephant in the room that no one wanted to really talk about.

Approach: Unboundary designed InterfaceFLOR’s exhibit space based on the elephant-in-the-room concept. A massive hanging canopy featuring life-size photos of an elephant and the phrase “You can’t ignore me” served as the booth’s focal point. The booth’s floor space featured seven tall Lucite tanks designed to appear as if they contained oil. Each tank—with a descending level of oil—communicated a simple step the company had taken in getting its business off oil. The last tank was left empty, symbolizing the company’s mission to get completely off oil by 2020.

The concept was carried through to T-shirts, stickers, a brochure and other “badges,” which fans of InterfaceFLOR could wear to show their support for the largest, most important goal in sustainability: getting off oil.

Effectiveness: This work was successful because it provided InterfaceFLOR salespeople and associates with a succinct and interesting way to talk about the company’s mission, as well as an external-facing platform that people could rally around. The concept stood out in a crowded arena and elevated the conversation at Greenbuild, inspiring the sales force and booth attendees to use these materials throughout the following year.

Nice balance between cause-oriented messaging and blowing their horn.