Hasta La Creative!

With the anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting coming up this Sunday, BBDO New York crafted a PSA campaign for Sandy Hook Promise, an gun violence prevention organization formed in the wake of that tragedy.

In the three-minute video “Monsters Under the Bed,” an interviewer has children draw pictures of monsters and then interviews parents asking them what they do to protect their children from these imaginary creatures, with parents offering up a range of responses. Then the interviewer changes the conversation, asking, “How do you protect them from gun violence?” Most of the parents just sit silently with a pained expression, and not one is able to offer a satisfying answer. BBDO New York drives the message home when text appears onscreen reading, “Last year, zero kids were killed by monsters under the bed. Let’s protect our kids from the real threats…so they can continue being afraid of the imaginary ones.”

The video ends by directing viewers to SandyHookPromise.org, where the organization offers parents, students and teachers tools and programs to prevent future gun violence, including mental wellness, social development and gun safety approaches.”Monsters Under the Bed” is being promoted on social channels including Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, and Twitter.

Additionally, BBDO New York worked with director Tarik Karam and executive producer Stephen Daldry to create a short documentary film called What They Left Behind. The documentary tells the story of three children who lost their lives to gun-related violence: “from a 17–year-old girl who committed suicide with her father’s gun; to an argument among young teenage boys in Iowa that  ended in bloodshed; to the Barden family who lost their 7-year-old son in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.”

“In the two years since I lost my son, I have been speaking with communities across the country to better understand the causes of gun violence,” said Nicole Hockley, communications director for Sandy Hook Promise and mother of six-year-old Sandy Hook victim Dylan. “What we have learned is that, as a nation, we can help to prevent tens of thousands of gun deaths, by first learning the warning signs of violent behavior and focusing on community-based programs to help and heal those most at risk.”

Stick around for the 35-minute What They Left Behind, along with credits, after the jump. (more…)

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It seems like there’s an awful lot of Back to the Future nostalgia invading the Internet these days, with posts about the series on sites like Reddit leading to listicles about the trilogy on nostalgia-aggregators like Buzzfeed which then go viral on Facebook and eventually find themselves on large emails your mom sends to her friends and CC’s you on for some reason. And, what with it being 2013 and all,  where advertising campaigns are becoming increasingly informed by memes, we get GE and BBDO NY using the “1.21 gigawatts” thing to sell you technology or something. Where we’re going, we don’t need roads to perdition; we just fly there through space and time.

And yet, nostalgia has a way of endearing you to things in a way totally out of your control. Call it manipulation, call it “effective advertising” using one of the oldest tricks in the book. Any way or slice it, it’s hard as even a casual fan of the series not to get a little giddy when you see what are ostensibly Marty McFly’s Nikes pop out of a souped-up Delorean. While Pepperidge Farm dares us to remember a time when people died of dystentary and snakebites like in Oregon Trail, Back to the Future‘s original audience has aged to the point where brands see the 1980s as a way to get consumers on board 30-something years later.

In fact, I hope this becomes a whole campaign where GE powers David Bowie‘s castle from Labyrinth, E.T.‘s glowing finger, and the computer from Weird Science. And, though it wouldn’t make much sense, maybe Michael J. Fox could narrate those spots too. Maybe in another 30 years, GE will power the ships from Avatar and Robin Thicke can provide us with his own deep-voiced VO. Trust me, it will make sense by then. Credits after the jump.

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