Here’s a great effort from Jung von Matt for the German Red Cross. Coming to the aid of children suffering with cancer, the agency worked with Germany’s football players who donated blood for the sick children. Each of the blood bags were labelled with the player’s name so the children knew who was coming to their aid. Check out the case video below.
I had to watch this PSA for Gun Free South Africa twice to really get it. It’s very subtle. In an effort to turn the country into a gun-free zone or at least mitigate the fact that over 50 firearms are stolen or lost each day and that 18 people are shot everyday, the spot delivers the message, “If you’re stolen gun was there, so were you. Hand in your gun.
Created by Y&R, the spot uses a very subtle bit or choreography to put a second person on the scene. Of the approach, Y&R Group Creative Director Bibi Lotter said,”I really loved the subtlety of Tony’s (Frieze Films directorTony Baggott) treatment. He’s crafted a thoughtful piece that doesn’t accuse anyone but makes people think about what it means to own a gun.”
Y&R had originally conceptualized the spot as a first-person shooter, but Tony rather suggested filming the PSA in a single, continuous take and using choreography to introduce the second person. It works quite well. But you have to notice the subtlety.
Perhaps you heard about that mixed gender MMA fight in Brazil? As you will see in this campaign case study video, the fight never actually happened because the whole this was a domestic violence awareness campaign.
Agencia3 in Rio de Janeiro created the campaign which had the media and social media debating the notion of a man fighting a woman. Should they? Shouldn’t they? What does it all mean?
The case study claims the campaign reached over 40 million people and achieving $3 million in earned media.
Young & Laramore has created a beautiful and compelling video for Building Tomorrow, an organization which aims to improve the lives of those living in the countries of East Africa.
Illustrated by New York Times illustrator Brian Rea, the video is accompanied by music from Noah and the Whale.
It’s a magical piece of work that centers on the notion that the only way we can permanently make meaningful changes in the world is to give people the tools to make those changes themselves. In this case, it’s education. Education people can use to sustain growth, become independent and build their own futures.
To mark World Autism Awareness month, BBDO NY and Autism Speaks have partnered to create a, one time, :60 commercial message which aims to help raise awareness of autism and to encourage parents to look for the early signs of autism because it’s been shown early intervention can make a big difference.
The :60 message is actually made up of four, stand-alone, short :15 commercials woven into one story that features the same family as they take a journey through their child’s upbringing. It begins with a family visit to a pediatrician, and then is followed by a series of short commercials for BBDO clients like Campbell Soup Company and AT&T Wireless.
As you watch the commercials, you’ll notice changes in the four to six year span between each advertiser’s spot. The same parents appear in each commercial as the young boy grows up, interacting with his family in everyday situations involving each of these client products.
The last story shows the young man in graduation gear with copy, “You just saw how early diagnosis can make a lifetime of difference. Watch again and learn the signs at www.autismspeaks.org/signs.”
The film aired live this morning — and will air only once — during CNN’s New Day.
In a coda to the to the ads, we realize the boy in the final segment, Reece Brown, was diagnosed with autism when he was young. And the actor who plays his father is his real father. The father talks about how Reece didn’t speak for the first five years of his life but can now build actual computers from scratch.
H&M hooked up with supermodel Gisele Bundchen to create a cover of Blondie’s hit “Heart of Glass” which will be released on Ultra Records with proceeds going to UNICEF.
Produced by Bob Sinclar, it’s all to promote H&M’s summer fashion line.
Even with aggressive autotuning, the song is, shall we say, not that great. But, hey, it’s for a good cause so head over to iTunes and download it. No one ever said you have to actually listen to it.
Hoping to latch itself onto the belief that any video with cute pets will go viral, Pedigree, with help from Colenso BBDO, is out with a video featuring cute puppies that’s part of its Adoption Drive. The brand will donate any YouTube advertising revenue generated from this video’s views and earmark it for feeding dogs in need.
So all you have to do is watch the video, send it to your friends, your mother, your sister. your old girlfriend and your grandmother and get them all to watch it and automagically, money will be generated for a good cause.
Nothing like one brand using other brands’ money for its own cause.
While there have been some amazingly powerful safe driving PSAs from all over the world, most of them resort to the dramatic, real-life trauma of the crash (see the all-time classic here). But this entry from Honda takes a different approach.
The automotive brand has enlisted the power of emoticons to convey its message with a new social media program aligned with April’s Distracted Driving Awareness Month to call attention to the dangers of texting while driving. In support of this first-ever National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) initiative, Honda is launching the “Thumbs Up” (#thumbsup) social media campaign to reach young drivers by using emoticons along with a video that illustrates the importance of safe driving.
Of the effort, Honda CVP and GM Jeff Conrad said, “Honda’s ‘Thumbs Up’ campaign is designed to resonate with a diverse group of younger drivers to raise awareness of the perils of texting while driving. Honda is deeply concerned about the safety of all of our customers and we remain committed to enhancing the safety for all of those on the road.”
As part of the campaign, still images and GIFs will be used on Honda social platforms providing information about distracted driving and tips on ways to stay focused while driving. Corresponding downloadable mobile wallpaper and banners will help remind drivers not to text and drive.
The campaign includes a hispanic element as well.
In April of 2013, Dininyls frontwomen Chrissy Amphlett died from breast cancer after an ultrasound and mammogram missed the cancer. Later, Amphlett found a lump on her own through self-examination.
It’s said that her dying wish was to have the 1990 hit, I Touch Myself, be a reminder to all women to check themselves regularly for signs of breast cancer. The Australian advocacy group, Cancer Council New South Wales, took it upon themselves to work with supporters and other singers to create this new version of the song.
Participating in the creation are Olivia Newton-John, Sarah Blasko, Connie Mitchell, Sarah McLeod, Katie Noonan, Little Pattie, Megan Washington, Deborah Conway and Suze DeMarchi.
The song, always strangely sexual in tonality., takes on an entirely new meaning with this PSA effort that’s tru
David Hakimyar, a student at the Filmadademy Baden-Wuerttemberg in Germany, created a commercial for PETA which tells the sad story of what happens to male chicks as they attempt to take first flight.
While the work is not official PETA work, the cause group did give Hakimyar permission to use the PETA logo and he tells us PETA will be posting the video on their official channel as well.
Don’t Panic is out with a powerful Save the Children PSA which calls attention to the crisis in Syria by examining what would happen to a girl in London — one second at a time — if the crisis came to the UK.
The 90 second video, which begins with the girl’s birthday and ends with her next, starts out lovingly enough with shots of warm family life. It then shares the tragic changes to the girl’s life were the crisis occurring in her own back yard.
The video ends with “Just because it isn’t happening here doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.”
The work coincides with the lead up to the third anniversary of the crisis
Drinkwise Australia is out with a decidedly elegant approach to convincing young people to stay classy and drink properly. Two animated videos are narrated by a very proper Englishman who makes even the words “fuck-eyed” and “shit-faced” sound Shakespearean.
To combat the fact one in five women suffer from eating disorders, Enosh, the Israeli Association for Mental Health, is out with an ad that has a woman in her underwear getting “eaten” by creepy-looking, snake-like skeleton creatures. It’s all to convey the fact eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia are “dead scary.”
And so it seems, the campaign, created by TBWA\Yehoshua, aims to get women to imagine they have creepy-looking, snake-like skeleton creatures swirling around their midsections…unless they go out and down a few Big Macs. Or at least a salad or two.
Evolve, a non profit gun safety organization founded by Jon Bond and his wife Rebecca, is out with its first PSA. Entitled The Bill of Rights for Dumbasses, the PSA takes a satirical look at your founding fathers reviewing the Bill of Rights.
In reviewing the second amendment, the Thomas Jefferson character says the second amendment is too long and the phrase “as long people aren’t being dumbasses about it” isn’t needed because it should be a given.
We are then shown hilarious scenes of, dumbass gun handing scenarios.
The video ends with an interesting twist. The founding fathers themselves go outside and play piñata with a rifle toting guy wearing a blindfold. Pretty dumasss, right?
So what’s the point? The founding fathers were dumbasses for leaving out the dumbass phrase? American will always be dumasses when it comes to guns? Playing piñata is awesome with a blindfolded gunman?
Of the work, Rebecca Bond says,”Safety is not a side. Gun owners and non-gun owners live with guns in this country, and we should all be able to have a collaborative conversation about how to think about gun safety. Humor can be a gateway to taking away the defensiveness that is the legacy of these discussions. We hope to put this conversation on the kitchen table and start talking about it.”
Well it certainly has started a conversation. But it’s the usual vitriolic kind with people taking sides and calling others who don’t see things their way dumbasses. At least on YouTube.
Personally, we don’t think this issue will ever be solved. Until aliens land, determine who the dumasses are — gun owners and non-gun owners alike — and vaporize them like a piñata.
We love a good fight, don’t you? Well, that is, a good clean ad fight. Between creatives. Who are students. Trying to break into the industry. And one-up a fellow university at the same time.
So, yes, it is out pleasure to point you to CU at the AdFight, a sight on which University of Colorado Boulder students have formally accepted a challenge from Brigham Young University to engage in a 3-day ad battle they hope to have judge by you. Yes, you. They want advertising professionals to judge the competition and they’s also love it if an agency would step up with a hypothetical (or real, for that matter) brief from which the battle can be based.
So come on. Help these students out. And remember, you were young and hungry once too.
When you know something is going to end badly you watch with a high degree of dread and, in this particular case, wonder just how the kids in this Australian Learn For Life Stay-In-School PSA, created by Perth production firm Henry & Aaron, are going to meet their demise. There in a VW bus. Will they crash? There at the ocean. Will it be a shark?
No. Not even close. It will be worse. Much, much worse.
UPDATE: Great. And now it’s probably fake. Just a promotion for the video’s creators.
Well here’s a powerful message from the National Congress of American Indians that celebrates the plight, achievements, attitude and history of the American Indian. The two minute video shares a collage of Indians, their place in America and pays tribute to their tribal names.
All throughout the video, created by goodness Mfg., we are given words that describe these proud people. At the end we are asked why a national football team still uses a derogatory word, referred to as the “R Word” by native Americans, as its name and mascot.
If only this were running during the Super Bowl.
We’re not quite sure what it is. Or why. But New Zealand, Australia and the UK consistently create the best road safety commercial in the world. This new one from Clememger BBDO for New Zealand’s Transport Agency is a bit different in its approach from PSAs that drag us through the horror of an automobile accident and more akin to the Sussex Safer Roads Embrace Life PSA which employed slow motion.
This New Zealand PSA takes things even slower. In fact, it stops things completely. As two drivers approach impending — and seemingly inevitable — doom, they step out of their vehicles and have a conversation about what’s about to happen. Much like what happens inside one’s own head prior to an accident. Time does seem to, in a sense, stop, as your brain — at light speed — analyzes the situation as if time had stopped. We speak from experience here.
But, in most cases — and in this ad — it’s just talk. The accident is inevitable. There is nothing that can be done at this point. All the hemming, hawing and apologizing won’t change the outcome. The message? Think things through before you reach the point of no return.
Oh how we’ve wanted to write a headline like that for so long. OK, maybe not. But it did get you to click on the headline, right? And, really, clicking is what this is all about. Today, Swedish agency Forsman & Bodenfors has given us reason to believe that, once again, clicking on a banner is a good thing. A very, very good thing.
Miraculously, the agency was able to get Mother Teresa, Ghandi and Jesus Christ all in the same room at the same time. Three people who have gone to great lengths to save lives and well, all of mankind. Who else could possibly earn a seat at this table? A banner clicker, that’s who.
In three well-crafted videos, we learn the importance of clicking on a banner. In this case, to help UNICEF deliver life saving products to those in need. See? Who says a banner clicker isn’t as heroic as Mother Teresa, Ghandi or Jesus Christ?
Rampant commercialism. Black Friday. Idiots fighting over TV sets at Walmart. Is anyone sick of the disgustingly selfish focus on commercialism? Barton F. Graf 9000’s Jerry Graf and TDA_Boulder’s Jonathan Schoenberg are. The two men who ran into each other at a recent industry event decided to do something about it.
The two agencies have launched Bawx, a site on which, well, you can buy boxes. But with a twist. The boxes are both toys for children and a means of raising money for children’s charities Blue Sky Bridge in Boulder and Charley Davidson Fund in Boston.
As explained on the site, “Consumerism is a bit out of control these days. Kids would much rather spend time with their friends and parents and a Bawx, than the latest technology. Ok, that is a complete lie, but maybe if they did have a Bawx they would spend more time with people, and a bit less time with pixels.”
It’s an admirable effort. All box manufacturing costs will be born by the two agencies and all proceeds will be donated to the charities. A range of boxes are available from $24.99 to $499.99. But, all the boxes are the same. It’s up to the buyer to decide how much they want to donate.
It’s really “The perfect holiday gift for the 2 – 61?2 year old who would rather play with the box than what’s inside.”
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
