I just found an interesting way of distribution to promote a blood donation campaign: torrents! It’s the first one I see using this kind of technology. The smart aspect of the campaign is the approach of finding functioning similarities between web technologies and real life needs like blood donation. It is the concept of « sharing what you have, as yourself may one day need help ».
Of course the campaign is not only based on a short film announced in the main review site and available to download free of charge, its combined with a micro site, trailers and social promotion.
Today I want to share with you this interesting video from TEDxRC2. It’s about the power of mobile devices to coordinate, inform, and guide relief efforts in Haiti’s earthquake. Paul Conneally (public communications manager for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies) shows great examples of social media and other new technologies becoming central to humanitarian aid.
This short movie (realised by Neo agency) is interesting because it changes from traditional communication supports used to raise people awareness about environment. There is a good analogy between the fact that the solution is in our hands and this animation realized with hand shadows. Moreover, the performance and realisation are really great, creating an entire world to pass the message : stop deforestation in the Brazilian Cerrado. The Cerrado savannah is disappearing faster than the Amazon rainforest because of soya farming.
WWF UK is encouraging UK consumers to take a simple action in asking their supermarkets to commit to buying all their soya from RTRS certified sources by 2015.
Will you?
Girl effect is a campaign to end poverty and help developing world through the unique potential of girls. In fact the girl effect is not only one big campaign but hundreds of thousands campaigns spread by people like us. I think that this video is a good example of the general campaign and message.
Lately, we have seen a lot of video clips based on kinetic typography but this one has an interesting use of colours to support the message. They succeeded to reinforce it by using orange colour when they explain the girl effect principles, bringing life and light in the presentation. This colour is opposed to the black and white combination used to implement the context and increase the dramatic effect. I find this use of colours very pedagogical. It brings a dynamic – increased by the music – and strengthens the message.
The advantage of this type of communication is that they can reach a large scale of people and age through a logical demonstration. And for me, the aim is to convince people through this argumentation and not particularly to create an emotion. So this use of kinetic typography is really well adapted to their cause and well realized.
You can also watch more videos and have some information about the girl effect on their website: girleffect.org.
We recently had the opportunity to see several campaigns about breast cancer. I’d like to confront two of them to show how they succeeded to catch their audience.
The first one is based in Singapore targeting women for breast examination with 3 prints. The second one is a Polish campaign based on viral advertising for men. It trains them to examine their partners’ breast and encourage breast cancer screening.
Prints for women
The Breast Cancer Foundation of Singapore offered a new awareness campaign created by DDB Singapore to promote breast examination.
They chose humour through body painting to pass their message. Breasts are really well integrated in those paintings and become an entire part of it, like jean’s buttons or pimple. Drawing women like comics with some of their complexes and obsessions is really clever. It creates an opposition between appearance and what matters. The artistic direction is also really well done and adapted to the target: humour and self-derision with an artistic dimension. Women can picture themselves in those situations. It increases the chance that the message reach the audience, have an impact and encourage them to go to breast exam.
Viral advertising for men
This campaign, created by Change Integrated Poland, is original because it is for men who are not directly concerned by breast cancer. Quite a challenge! They chose to create a viral advertising campaign.
It was integrated in the front page of one of the most famous website in the adult part. They replaced one of the pictures with their own. The idea is that men will click on it and start following instructions show by the woman. In playing they will learn how to examine their partner’s breast and help prevent breast cancer. They only discover the aim of this game at the end of the slide-show.
In terms of communications, I think that it is a good strategy and seems to be a success:
Viral advertising is a good way to communicate about an event or a cause: around 175 000 person have seen this campaign and be trained in a week. Moreover, viral advertising has generally an important impact and success like Tippex or WWF with the exibition 1600 pandas.
The cost: It is less expensive to train men through this kind of on-line support than off-line breast check training courses. Nevertheless, I don’t think that we can compare them – in terms of quality – but it seems to be a good introduction. It can also reach more people and increase the chance to encourage them to be more concerned about it.
The audience: they targeted men for this campaign and it seems that they found a good way to reach them. This campaign can be a subject of criticism because they sexualized cancer. It is true that the campaign aid is an adult website so in this way I have to agree. Showing breast to say that it is not shameful or lewd thing like in nursing or to prevent you from breast cancer is one thing and maybe in choosing this communication aid they went too far.
They succeeded to adapt with success a delicate subject to a public which is not directly concerned. So it was important to speak about this campaign. In addition they used a viral strategy which seems to be a raising practice in nonprofit.
The interesting point of those campaigns is that they spoke about the same subject in targeting two different audiences. They also chose two strategies: prints and viral advertising. We can notice that they both had some lightness in it – comic drawings and game – adapted to their target to reach them. They both tried to integrate people habits or life to pass the message and add it in their life.
What if we just seat and listen to Annie Leonard’s story of bottled water:
This video is from the same idea than the one she created for Stuff and Cap & Trade. The story of bottled water is the second in a series of six short films the Story of Stuff Project with Free Range Sudio.
You’ll learn a lot about what your bottled water really is and be shocked about the environmental impact of it. You’ll also discover what bottled water producers don’t want you to know. The use of funny drawings and schemas allows us to take easily the all picture of the situation. It can also interest and be understood by a young audience. So this video could be use to raise awareness at school about this issue and maybe change their habits in the future.
