We've all seen those gut-wrenching PSAs that urge us not to drink and drive. The ones that show the emotionally intense ramifications of that poor decision. From the simple to full-on death and dismemberment. We're late to this but this new PSA from Sherry Matthews Advocacy Marketing for the Texas Department of Transportation takes a decidedly different approach.
We see a tweet about meeting for a drink at a local bar. The entire scenario then unfolds online on social media platforms such as Twitter, SMS, Facebook, Gowalla(?), online banking, Google, Gmail and LinkedIn. From start to finish, the story is told using today's methods of communication.
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Here's a domestic violence PSA that clearly shares the horrific violence of domestic abuse without actually showing the violence. And yet, it's more powerful than PSA's that do show the violence. Created by Y&R Chicago for the National Domestic Violence Abuse Hotline, the work is beautifully executed and brings us inside the mind of the victim if only for a minute to share her tragedy. And it delivers a truism about domestic violence: it rarely stops.
The spot is accompanied by Peter Gabriel's eerie Mercy Street as the woman looks at herself in the mirror, tries to heal herself only to realize there's no end to it. Unless, of course, she calls the NDVH hotline.
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- Is the New York Jets situation with Ines Sainz just another publicity stunt?
- Need to hype a stupid app that analyzes your poop? Take a shot of a chick with her tights down taking a dump in a stall. Yea. That'll do it.
- The Lindsay Lohan Milkaholic law suit thing has ended in settlement.
- Brooklyn creative agency Big Spaceship is out with new work for Microsoft. Called Always Beautiful, the "interactive music experience that uses the history of the web as a personal paintbrush" touts IE9.
- Counter-culture princess Charlyne Yi has shed her hair and dismissed food to raise awareness for OxFam America.
- For the Born HIV Free campaign and the Global Fund, YouTube is launching a campaign from Johannes Leonardo that will position 20 teams of campaign envoys at Manhattan intersections, holding signs with HIV facts that urge people to "free future generations from HIV by 2015."
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As the very cute PETA Spokesperson Lauren Stroyeck told the Tulsa news media how much water is wasted to process meat, two PETA employees, Virginia Fort and Lauren Quillo, showered nude in downtown Tulsa. The group claims more water can be saved by skipping one pound of meat than skipping a half year of showers
Explaining the stunt, Stroyeck said, "Facts and figures alone aren't usually enough to engage people but when they see two ladies showering on the sidewalk."
As Fort and Quillo shower in the background, Stroyeck contimues, saying, "Over half the water in the United States goes to raising and killing animals on factory farms."
In a PSA from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine we see a dean man laying on a gurney with his grieving wife at his side. As the camera pans down his body, we see the man is holding a half-eaten hamburger. As the camera pans to his feet, we see the Golden Arches drawn over his cold feet and we hear a voice over tells us all the bad things a non-vegetarian diet can do to us.
The message is clear. McDonald's is killing us. Of course that's totally untrue. Much like the pro-gun camp would say, food doesn't kill people, people who put the wrong kind or too much of it in their mouth do. Obesity and all that comes with eating bad food isn't caused by a marketing campaign. It's caused by shoving the wrong food in one's mouth.
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Over the weekend, 9/11 memorials were held across the nation. In New York, one such memorial was held at at City Hall Park. Organized by inventors Steven Brandstetter and James Devlin of J&S Gaming, the event featured the pair's Lottery Ball Characters which were turned into life sized costumes to represent the likeness of a police officer and a fireman.
According to the press release, the purpose of the rally was to "pay tribute to the men and women who put their lives on the line on a daily basis to protect and serve our communities." Brandsetter and Devlin put the rally together with the consent of retired NYPD police officer Stan Jefferson who was reportedly forced into retirement because of an illness he contracted while working at Ground Zero.
Apparently, the government isn't doing all it can do and the rally aimed to bring that to the attention of the public.
The campaign also brought something else to light. The sad fact some people are so lacking in the common sense department, they have no idea when something grotesquely oversteps the line of acceptability. To diminish the lives of those lost during 9/11 to a couple of stupid lottery characters - as if the event were sponsored by Tony the Tiger or something - is deplorable, inexcusable and plain idiotic.
That is all.
UK Charity National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has launched a new PSA to raise awareness of its Helpline people can call when they witness potential child abuse. The ad takes us through scene after scene of the mundane aspects of daily life until we are presented with a not so mundane aspect of daily life: the potential mistreatment of a child.
It captures perfectly that moment we go through when we decide whether or not to butt into other people's business and take matters into our own hands. There's always doubt. There's always hesitation. There's always embarrassment. But at some point, we make the decision it's better to stick our nose in for the greater good.
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Breasts. If any alien race landed here on earth and witnessed our obsession with breasts, all they'd have to do to take over our world would be to morph into an army on bikini-clad women sporting boobs the size of cantaloupes to peacefully subdue us.
Perhaps that's why marketers have leveraged that very same obsession to sell stuff. The bigger the boob, the bigger the sell. So it's not surprising that when breasts (or breast-related items) are the "product" itself, boobs of all shapes, sizes, color and jiggle factor are trotted out. Just look at any breast cancer campaign. Tracy Clark-Flory did and she didn't like what she saw. Not one bit.
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On September 9, Lawson Clark, aka MaleCopywriter, aka Burt Reynolds look-a-like, will embark upon a 3,200 journey from Vancouver to Portland Maine...on a 150cc scooter...for ten days to raise money for Parkinson's disease.
Every two years the Scooter Cannonball Run is held and every two years hundreds of people choose to ride across country on a hemorrhoid-inducing scooter. Some do it for fun. Some do it for charity. Others do it, well, because they are just crazy...or stupid.
But Lawson, fellow star of the movie Lemonade, is doing it for his uncle who recently lost his battle with the disease. We wish him well. And you should too.
Be sure to follow his adventure over at his blog.
London agency Kitcatt Nohr Alexander Shaw is out with a new television commercial for WaterAid. Directed by Susannah Hayes, the ad features the popular playground song "Diarrhea Diarrhea". During the first half of the ad, shot at a primary school in Hackney, British children smile and giggle as they sing the song which, of course, is totally normal because, well, diarrhea is funny what with all the farting and squirting that accompanies it.
But all that farting and squirting isn't so funny when it's rampant in countries like Zambia ans the commercial touches on that by cutting to a boy who not so happily sings, "When it's just killed your sister and you're really going to miss her, diarrhea, diarrhea."
The campaign advocates the building of sanitary pit toilets which can help stop the spread of diarrhea.
Along with the ad which will air on Sky One, Discovery, Bravo, More 4 and SkySports, PR, email, inserts, videos and online ads are part of the campaign.
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