Planning for Good’s (the group of account planners and their friends using their brains to help solve problems for causes and non-profits) is taking on a branding brief for TIME’S UP!, the group that started the infamous Critical Mass rides. Self proclaimed as New York’s Direct Action Environmental Organization it’s:

a grassroots environmental group that uses educational outreach and direct action to promote a more sustainable, less toxic city. For more than 15 years, TIME’S UP! has worked to educate people about the environmental impacts of everyday decisions, from the food we buy to the means of transportation we use.

By direct action, they mean anything from creating ghost bikes to encouraging people to put down makeshift ramps in locations where the city should have but hasn’t yet. (They do work to protect gardens and educated about climate change too, though they’re probably best known for their alt transportation work.) If you’ve gone to one of the rides, you probably have a pretty good idea of the base– heavy duty Kryptonite chains, protest signs, aging hippies, puppets, cycler spandex and transportation activists make up the standard melange. They’re left of mainstream for sure but are looking to get more people involved, making the branding effort on this one interesting.

The group could use a bit of image help (the people are amazingly open but its hard core skew and association with things like arrests and staging “encampments” in gardens to stop bulldozers can scare away even some of the braver New Yorkers). We’re big fans (I remember my first critical mass ride with fond aggression toward cars) but we’re looking forward to what the folks at Planning for Good come up with. Until then, check out the next critical mass ride. If you do get arrested, you’ll be a hero, and if you shy away, you can pawn it off on not wanting to add to the $1.32 million, the NYC spent in 2006 to suppress the monthly rides. No worries, we’ll do a bike lift for ya.