For this new year I wanted to share with you a great campaign created by Lowe Brindfors – Sweden for Save the children UK.
In a fist place we can consider the internal organization. They chose to oppose two posters with the same structure: on the right part a moment of our reality and on the left part some others, less peaceful and easy. If we observe the photos on the right, we can see that individually they got an artistic dimension which could also be used for some advertising campaign like camping furniture or running shoes. They present some life instants in which we can easily picture ourselves. On the left, those photos are more distant from us, like a photo coverage. The message of each one is transformed when they are opposed, creating a new one strengthened by this disposition.
There is no text in those prints except the website. It allows the internal organization and the photos to create an effect and the audience to be touched by it. The name of the website – which is also the name of the campaign – simply undertake the photos and the meaning of the campaign.
For us, it is obvious that we are privileged but the aim of the campaign isn’t really clear: make us react to share our luck or arouse our curiosity? To found out more about it and the interactive part of this campaign visit the website which is awesome and really well realized!
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.
Here is one of the best idea in terms of communication I have seen recently! Petition isone of the less attractive communication tools, but Amnesty International succeeded to promote it with those great ads against torture. The idea was to make people see and understand the power of their signature. So even if it seems to be an insignificant act it matters. This campaign is simple, effective, concrete and an awesome idea.
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.
WaterAid offered a new campaign about a common disease in our countries: Diarrhoea. The NGO chose to speak about it because it causes a high rate of infant mortality in poorest countries.
Who is more appropriate to speak about infant mortality than children? This group of children from primary school is fun; singing a song about diarrhoea, making noises, like any children in our countries. However, when the child from a southern village ends the song, he is not having fun or laughing. He seems more serious and less carefree. This effect is reinforced by the number of children dying of it every day, which adds a tragic dimension.
The advantage of choosing kids to sing and speak about it is a good way to avoid pathos, even if the off screen voice is kind of tragic. Nevertheless, the organization didn’t fall into the common use of dying children to encourage people to make donations. So the interesting point is this use of childish lightness to pass a message. It also reminds us that a simple annoyance like diarrhoea can have more disastrous implications in poorest countries. Meanwhile, they make the solution quite “simple”: dig toilets and we can easily help through donations.
The most interesting aspect for me in this campaign is that humour and simplicity are a good way to speak about delicate subjects. A thing that sometimes we forgot .
June 6th 2010 was Médecins du Monde‘s birthday. 30 years ago MDM was published in the Official Journal, which makes a new association official in France.
June 7th was MDM’s new communications campaign launch, based on its anniversary. Their target is people between 25/35 years old, knowing the organization but not its aim or how to help. The message of this campaign is «Nous sommes tous Médecins du Monde » (We are all world’s doctors).They oriented it on their present and future actions, their actors and donors.
Concerning the offline part, they entrusted Saatchi & Saatchi to realize it:
Those prints reflect four of MDM’s fights: HIV/AIDS, violence against women, help to migrants and emergency interventions. There is an interesting game in the realization: when we look at it in the first place, we create short-cuts between photo and text. But when we take the time to read the paragraph in white, we can see that they are not victims but donors. It is a really good game based on our preconceptions.
About the online part, MDM decided to create a web documentary.
It is a realization composed of témoignages from five 30 years old people from five different continents. MDM tried to show an evolution from 30 years ago with French doctors to actual MDM’s people who are not necessarily doctors or French.
The other part is a contest in which people can create a documentary to explain what precariousness means to them. At the end, the winner will be diffused by MDM and Dailymotion.
This part of the communication campaign is a good example of how important témoignage is in MDM’s actions and values and how they try to combine it with new technologies. In addition, we can observe that there is a « new » trend in nonprofit communication which boosts donors’ self-esteem.
Tyrannybook, created by Amnesty International Portugal and Leo Burnett Iberia, is a new social network in which you can keep an eye on world leaders who violate Human Rights the most.
By creating a community around this issue, the organization not only gains visibility but also keeps people conscious of what is going on, up dated by Amnesty and users. It is a good way to give people the opportunity to discuss current issues, share point of views, become allies, etc. They also created a video to explain the concept and how to use it.
As we know, social networks are new tools in nonprofit communications strategies and this is really a good example of how to reinvent one of them by creating a community to serve an organization and a cause.
What is interesting in this awareness campaign is that they used a situation that people usually do for fun. In this short video they just said that some people photocopy their butt for fun and so don’t be ashamed of showing yours because it can save your life!
Here are the prints which I really like because they added diversity with men and women butts and black/white images involved that everyone is concerned. The artistic direction of this project was really good and the visual choice really adapted to the subject. Nice Campaign!
This is a campaign created by TBWA, Cairo, Egypt for White Angel Foundation:
As we all know child labour is a big issue in developing countries, so it is a good initiative to remind us that problem. They were good ideas with boys grey hair and the fact that they don’t have a childhood because of their work. Moreover, the pictures’ backgrounds show their work conditions and environments which add a realistic effect and increase the impact of the campaign. But they can be bothered by those old children because kids are one of public opinion’s trouble spots. Another problem in those ads seems to be texts; they are barely visible especially the telephone number at the bottom of the page. The most impressive element is that there are 2.7 million children working in one state and maybe it would have been interesting to centre their prints on this fact.
This is a very interesting fundraising campaign which took place in Norway. This campaign was realized in January 2010 by Try, Oslo, Norway for the Salvation Army: « Roof over head and a bed to sleep in ».
What I really like in this campaign is that they used urban elements, which is our ordinary environment. They reinvented an element which is common to all of us; people use bus shelter all the time to go to work or to go back home and sometime it is a shelter for homeless. Transforming ads-shells in coins-shells for the benefits of homeless is a good idea, because we usually have some coins in our wallet and we waste a lot of time waiting for the bus. So we have time to read those ads and make a donation. Moreover, we also have the opportunity to see the immediate effect in creating the bed or the roof with coins and it encourages people to make donation to finish it.
Those ads reminds me another one from MIRA Canada representing a guide dog with coins and encouraging people to make donation for helping disabled individuals to get a guide dog.
.
