Hasta La Creative!

Brief:
Gothenburg Homeless Aid is a voluntary organisation that helps the homeless, substance abusers and other vulnerable people. People are a bit more generous around Christmas and tend to give more to those less fortunate than themselves. That’s why Christmas is a very important time for the Gothenburg Homeless Aid, a time when a large proportion of the entire year’s funding is collected. But what can be done to stand out in the onslaught of mailings and Christmas cards? Actually, we created another Christmas card.

Solution:
To draw attention to all the people with no fixed abode in Gothenburg we sent out the Christmas cards in envelopes addressed to: “Lasse Persson, a doorway/tunnel/stairwell, Hisingen (a part of Gothenburg)” and wrote the details of the actual intended recipient on the back of the envelope. Obviously the Swedish post office couldn’t find Lasse because he has no real address. The mail therefore had to be returned to the ‘Sender’ address on the back of the envelope with a post office stamp saying ‘Not known at this address’. The yellow label on the envelope not only highlights the fact that there are people in Gothenburg who have nowhere to live. It makes it virtually impossible for the recipient to simply discard it without opening it and seeing what it’s all about.

Results:
The yellow label on the envelope not only highlights the fact that there are people in Gothenburg who have nowhere to live. It makes it virtually impossible for the recipient to simply discard it without opening it and seeing what it’s all about. The Christmas card was sent to 20,000 people in Gothenburg, in the days before and after Christmas. The campaign raised SEK 1.6 million (around EUR 170,000), which is more than any other campaign for Gothenburg Homeless Aid. The result was also an increase by 60% compared to the previous Christmas campaign.

Advertising Agency: GOSS, Gothenburg, Sweden
Copywriter: Elisabeth Berlander, Micke Schultz, Ulrika Good
Art Director: Mimmi Andersson, Mattias Frendberg, Jan Eneroth, Albin Larsson
Production Designers: Louise Christiansson, Elin Andreasson, Lena Björklund Henriksson
Account Supervisors: Fredrik Toreskog, Johan Good, Stig Lundstedt
Account Managers: Lena Kling, Anna Troglin, Malin Berggren, Karolina Mindhammar, Monica N. Persson
Web Director: Robert German
Art Director: Gunnar Skarland

Brief:
To get a largely indifferent city to participate in a literacy initiative, aimed at educating street children. Our client ‘Children of the World’ needed to generate both funds and volunteers for the programme to be successful.

Solution:
We observed that most of the street children who were illiterate, ironically spent their day selling magazines and books to commuters at traffic signals. The rest of the city spent a fair amount of time trying to navigate these same roads. We used the magazines these children were selling as the medium and urged people to help the kids read them; by placing tear-off, self-stamped envelopes on the jackets of the magazines with the message ‘Help me read this’.

Results:
Within the first week itself, enquiries and donations started pouring in. Post the campaign period, Children of the World received over 300 sponsors for individual children, a number that far exceeded results in previous years. Our client also managed to set up makeshift schools across the city There were also many call-ins from people, many of whom are now volunteers for the programme.

Advertising Agency: Contract Advertising, New Delhi, India
Copywriter: Natasha M Martis
Creative Director / Art Director: Vineet Mahajan
Creative Director: Uddalak Gupta
Chief Creative Officer: Ravi Deshpande

(TrendHunter.com) This powerful new campaign from Amnesty International uses Olympic games such as swimming, archery, and weight lifting as torture techniques.

In an obvious critique of China’s human rights violations…

If there’s one thing that’s kept people interested in Will Smith’s super-anti-hero movie Hancock, it’s that bit of the trailer where he hurls a beached whale into a sailboat. Knowing a good thing when they see it, British agency Skive has turned the scene into a banner-ad game. I like it, although I was surprised to see you lose points when you hit a boat. I think you should get bonus points by improving on the original and taking out two boats at once.

—Posted by David Griner

(TrendHunter.com) Today NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a free Bon Jovi concert in NYC.

Furthermore, Bon Jovi wasn’t the only free concert on the list. The All-Star Week show will also include free performances…

Nothing rawks the blog world like a scandale. Here’s one for the hour: Boing Boing has been removing posts written by, or in reference to, Violet Blue, a sex columnist for the SF Chronicle….

(TrendHunter.com) John Galliano started the Paris couture season with an exquisite Dior Couture Fall 08/ 09 show that flaunted peekaboo ‘now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t’ pieces. I have to say this is my absolute favorite…

AdFreak scribe David Griner is, for lack of a better description, a well-oiled social-media machine. Now, he’s found time to fire up a whole blog about the subject. The Social Path, unveiled yesterday, promises “a jargon-free journey through the world of social media,” and already feels, in the best sense, quite Advergirl-y in its expansive, methodical approach and friendly tone. (It’s also oil-free.) Advergirl, in fact, has posted an interview with Griner on her site, in which he explains more about how the site came to be (for one thing, he’s writing it under the aegis of his employer, Alabama ad agency Luckie & Co.) and where it might be headed. At AdFreak, our own Falstaff-ian feelings of abandonment have been assuaged by Griner’s promise to continue blogging here as well.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

My new column on Talent Zoo won’t be on the home page until Thursday, but you can check it out now.

I take a closer look at the BBDO/Big Spaceship/HBO/Cannes credit kerfuffle, as was discussed here.

We all know the MO of lead agencies—and by “lead agencies” I mean the brand agencies, traditional agencies, “big dumb agencies,” whatever you want to call them. They want control. Over ideas, money, credit, over everything. They’ll control it all until they die.

So it’s time for interactive agencies to step up. And open up. Or step back.

How? Start hiring idea people. Hire strategic thinkers. Look at brands from a more complete perspective. And offer more services to clients.

It’s gotten to the point where interactive shops hire people who’ve spent much of their careers doing online work. Which is doable given that marketing on the Internet has been around for 14 years or so. Those people are in demand.

But there’s a host of people who aren’t given a second glance, and they could potentially be the most valuable people to an interactive agency with dreams of growth and glory. The idea people aren’t always still thinking in strictly old media—TV, print, etc. They’re more open to new media than you might think, and they’re out there experimenting with everything from blogs to web videos to social media apps in their spare time.

– Th1ng was appointed to highlight “London’s outstanding cultural and business successes” and “raise the profile of its film industry and talent” for the London 2012 Olympic Games.