With Cannes Lions Advertising Festival starting to roll, maybe the ad people enjoying the sun and booze take a few minutes out of their time to reflect on a better way to spend their talents and convince the organization and rest of the industry on creating advertising that does make a difference, instead of using it as an excuse to get a piece of metal.
Last year, on a short Twitter exchange with Marc from Osocio on the subject of awards and social marketing, i replied:
We’re in the business of changing behaviours, not winning awards.
Fast forward to Cannes 2009, and on a great collaboration with the duo from StealOurIdeas.com, Osocio presents their draft concepts on how your brand should be used for the right reasons,
Every year hundreds of PSAs are done for the wrong reasons.
Help us to create social advertising that actually makes a difference.
The next time you catch a creative doing spoof work just to win awards, forward these concepts so he or she could get a few really noble ideas.
The Braille League (Belgium) helps blind and partially sighted people in professional, social and cultural areas, promoting also several actions to create awareness to the problems this group of individuals faces.
On a brilliant and innovative use of the omnipresent cellphone, agency Duval Guillaume challenged a ordinary daily event: You know when you happen to make a call by accident to the first recorded contact on your cellphone address book?
So how about turn that into a good action, by placing The Braille League number on the first slot ?
And so the award winning campaign “A Blind Call” was born:
Add “A blind call” as a contact on your cellphone (contact = A blind call ; number = 070 22 22 30)
If you accidentaly press your address book, that would be the first number
You no longer would bother Adrian, Alan or Armando thanks, anyway! but rather contribute to solve blind people’s problems.
The call ends after 30 seconds with a maximum toll of 0,75 *.
The campaign is live until 31/12/2008
Thousands of people made a blind call, and the muchawarded campaign had a surprisingly large coverage in media. A great use of world’s largest platform for a good cause.
