Hasta La Creative!

DDB Canada launched a pro-bono PSA campaign for Toronto Crime Stoppers examining the dangers of ecstasy use, entitled “Cookin’ with Molly.”

The spot, whose full-length version online runs 90 seconds, is presented as a cooking show with a drug dealer. Molly is a name for pure MDMA (commonly known as ecstasy), but, as the video shows, pills presented as “Molly” are often adulterated with substances ranging from methamphetamine and cocaine to heroin and even bath salts. “Welcome to ‘Cookin’ with Molly,’” says the host of the show at the beginning of the ad, “today’s secret ingredient is meth.” He adds just a pinch of bath salts to some ground up MDMA, a bunch of meth and finishes up with his “signature” blue color and some binder before pressing the pills. The online version of the spot ends by directing to viewers to the campaign landing site for more information. There are also 15 and 6 second broadcast versions of the spot. DDB Canada hopes the tongue-in-cheek approach of the campaign, which launched today and will run through the end of February, will resonate with the target audience of people between the ages of 15 and 25.

“These party-type drugs have been a growing concern, and Toronto Crime Stoppers wanted to tackle this head on without being heavy-handed, so the cooking show format is intended to be tongue-in-cheek,” explains Craig Ferguson, senior art director, DDB Canada Toronto. “At the same time, this creative still allows us to educate people on the harmful, hidden ingredients found in MDMA which was our key objective.” (more…)

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Dare Toronto teamed up with Penguin Books Canada to create a digital companion to Khaled Hosseini’s best selling novel And the Mountains Echoed, a project almost a year in the making.

Entitled “The Echo Project,” the site is a “a digital exploration of each of the 402 pages of the novel.” It’s an interesting proposition, and one that attracted many collaborators, including “contributions from Khaled Hosseini himself, magazine editors, TV & Radio personalities, producers, authors, painters and illustrators” — each of whom chose a page of the novel and either offered up ideas of what that page should look like on The Echo Project or told the team at Dare how the page made them feel and left it up to them to develop further. The pages represented on The Echo Project include a “unique assortment of interactive puzzles, motion graphics, videos, illustrations, audio and video that allow the reader to explore themes that are complimentary to the story, like references to history and culture.”

“We hoped it would evolve and take on a life of its own. And it has,” said Paul Little, Dare’s executive creative director. “The concept was a framework to allow any content that helped embellish, explain or express. And because of the range of content, it needed it to be flexible enough to allow for spontaneity and fan contribution.”

Dare Toronto and Penguin believe that The Echo Project “is a sign of how book publishers will evolve their launch strategies to offer different reading experiences for avid and casual book readers.” As André Louis, director of planning at Dare explains, “Avid book readers got to co-create and live a more immersive book experience; casual readers get the ‘DVD-extras’ that go along with the paperback. We’re leveraging avid Hosseini fans’ word of mouth to influence those who buy a few books a year in an attempt to sell more to casual readers.”

Dare and Penguin are no strangers to exploring the intersection of books and digital, having “created the MyFry app which allowed users to read British writer and actor Stephen Fry’s second autobiography in a non-linear, theme-based fashion via mobile” back in 2011. The Echo Project will be unveiled in its entirety and promoted in the paperback edition of And the Mountains Echoed scheduled for publication this June. For an idea of what to expect from The Echo Project, check out the video above, or head on over to the site for a more complete experience. Credits after the jump. continued…

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