About - Osocio, Social Advertising and Non-profit Campaigns

Social advertising and non-profit campaigns from around the globe

About Osocio

Osocio is dedicated to social advertising and non-profit campaigns. It’s the place where marketing and activism collide. Formerly known as the Houtlust Blog, Osocio is the central online hub for advertisers, ad agencies, grassroots, activists, social entrepreneurs, and good Samaritans from around the globe.

Despite there being hundreds of other ad blogs on the web, Houtlust stood out by focusing exclusively on social advertising. Unlike commercial advertising, which only attempts to influence purchase decisions, non-profit ads seeks to connect us with other human beings. Social advertising has an uncanny power to make us stop, think and then take action to help a person, or a group of people, who we don’t even know, who might be from a foreign culture, living thousands of miles away. And for that reason we celebrate these ads, study them and discuss them at length. We hope you will too.

Created by Marc van Gurp in October 2005, Houtlust began as a personal collection of non-profit ads. Originally the site was only written in Dutch, with no thoughts of a wider audience. But the demand for an English version quickly grew. The tiny niche blog got bigger and bigger. And it wasn’t long before Houtlust became known as the authoritative reference of non-profit advertising for the ad industry and socially minded people everywhere.

In the spring of 2007 discussions started on how to take Houtlust to the next level. Interactive agency Onstuimig and branding agency Alef de Jong were quick to volunteer their services to help with the re-brand and re-launch of new website. The result of this cooperation is where you are now: Osocio.

Osocio is more then a blog. It’s a complete resource for all things in the world of non-profit and social messaging. It’s a platform for global and local social issues, both large and small. It’s a community of social thinkers and marketing do-gooders.

While Houtlust was curated by one person (Marc van Gurp), Osocio has several contributors, each of whom are specialists in a specific field of the diverse non-profit sector. We are glad to welcome these experts to the Osocio team (see below).

Of course, we have our own ideas on how to make the world a better place. However, Osocio promises to never push any political agenda of its own. The campaigns we publish in no way directly express our personal stance on a specific issue. Our focus is solely on the communication of social messages.

If you feel you can collaborate in any shape or form, please contact us. We’re always keen on new social campaigns. So please send us the non-profit marketing you’ve been working on, or the work of your agency, along with news, links or tips.

Although you can read this text in many languages, all the content of Osocio is originally written in English.

Tags: abuse, activism, advertising, animal rights, awards, animal rights, campaign, communication, culture, design, drugs, education, entrepreneur, gender issues, grassroots, environment, fundraising, government, health, human rights, marketing, media, ngo, non-profit, politics, religion, poverty, road safety, social, social aid, solidarity, third world, violence, war, woman issues.

Copy by Littlejohn, copywriter and editor of advertising for peanuts.

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Osocio bloggers

Ana Yoerg
An amalgam of Russian, Italian, British, and German threads combine in Ana Yoerg, a recently married web-mistress and new media fanate. Though she studied English at Princeton where she also ran around in circles on the volleyball court, she learned to write elsewhere, from the library of an ex-New Yorker contributor to the quiet temples of northern Thailand. She is currently an online marketing journalist and also involved with three, four, and sometimes five up-and-coming businesses as PR manager and communications director, trying to navigate them through the rapids of new media technique. You can find her musings on the interactive ad industry here.
Posts from Ana

Armando Alves
A interactive ninja from Portugal, mastering the way of Actionscript, with meditation in the science of Web Design. Currently working as Head of Interactive at DraftFCB Portugal, teaching young apprentices the secrets of the interactive world. Also the author of asourceofinspiration.com, a blog where a duality of the themes are approached: Source, as in "source code", the spirit of sharing and allowing others to learn more about the web; Inspiration, as in what sparks your creative genius. United they deliver a blog with fresh ideas for digital creativity, discussing themes such as advertising, creativity, online marketing and the web.
Posts from Armando

Dan Matutina
Dan Matutina is currently the Creative Director of Idea!s – a Philippine-based nonstock, nonprofit design and communications agency focused on doing advertising works for nonprofit organizations. Dan has worked on numerous materials for causes and NGOs, and has been involved in the creation of campaigns that helped the organizations tell their good stories to the world.
Apart from Idea!s, Dan designs toys, illustrates, oversees art direction for Gobbledygook, Inc., lectures on web and graphic design at the University of the Philippines, College of Fine Arts and does a lot of other stuff for free.
Posts from Dan

Gillo Cutrupi
Activist, blogger and consultant from Total Tactics.
Internet strategist and public outreach consultant, has helped activist and environmental groups in developing offline and online communities. Focussing mainly on community projects but with a technical background of Internet development. Recently involved also in online pr and marketing on the climate change issue.
Gillo Cutrupi’s Specialties: public outreach, social networks strategies, community building, online marketing, Internet strategies, internet development, information architecture.
Posts from Gillo

James David Morgan
James David Morgan is co-founder and designer at the Groundswell Collective, an art and design studio for social change. With an ambitious goal - to contribute tangibly to the fashioning and furthering of alternative modes of social organization - Groundswell has achieved much in its first years, having been awarded in design competitions, and included in international publications. James David writes the Groundswell blog, which provides a narrative about current trends in activist art and design. During the day, he is Advertising Director and Webmaster at the Nonprofit Quarterly, and currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts.
Posts from James David

Jeroen Tiebout
Jeroen Tiebout is currently enlisted at Sint-Lukas Brussels, trying to scrap up the necessary skills to make it in advertising. Through posting here he hopes to score at least some karma points.
Posts from Jeroen

Kate Andrews
As a Graphic Designer and Researcher, Kate Andrews holds a First Class Honours Degree in Graphic Design from The Arts Institute at Bournemouth, UK and a Merit Award from The International Society of Typographic Designers. Kate is a T-Shaped creative, with a self-confessed obsession for Communication Art and Design. In the past five years, has developed creative appreciation for Visual Communication - ever more influenced by the growing recognition for the importance of ethically and socially responsible design. Since graduating, Kate has worked for a variety of organisations including; The Sunday Times Magazine, Aura Events, Thriving.org, Synectics Innovation Consultancy and E-Cultura, and recently exhibited at Ringling College of Art and Design in Florida, in the exhibition 'Social Issues in Graphic Design'. Kate continues to write as UK Editor for Inhabitat.com and as a Feature Design Writer for Design:Related, Design21, Roger-Live and GOOD Magazine. In 2006, she founded the design blog Anamorphosis, to act as a platform to catalog the endless search for new design talent and examples of forward-thinking Visual Communication.
Posts from Kate

Liz Losh
Elizabeth Losh is currently the Writing Director of the Humanities Core Course at U.C. Irvine and teaches about digital rhetoric. She studies public communication, persuasive videogames, social marketing, public diplomacy, risk communication, and institutional branding. She writes about the discourses of “virtual state,” the media literacy of policy makers and authority figures, and the rhetoric surrounded regulatory attempts to limit everyday digital practices. Her first book, Virtualpolitik, will be coming out from MIT Press in Spring of 2009. Her daily online column by the same name won the John Lovas Award for best academic weblog in 2007, and -- in addition to Osocio -- she is a regular contributor to Siva Vaidhyanathan's weblog about free culture and intellectual property Sivacracy. She has published articles about videogames for the military and emergency first-responders, government websites, national digital libraries, political blogging, congressional hearings on the Internet, and state-funded online learning efforts.
Posts from Liz

Marc van Gurp
Founder of Houtlust/Osocio
In daily life webdesigner and webmaster at the Adformatie Groep, the Dutch platform about marketing and advertising.
Posts from Marc

Noah Scalin
Noah is a lifelong activist and founder of the award winning, socially conscious design and consulting firm Another Limited Rebellion. ALR has been featured in dozens of international books and magazines and in 2004 Noah was named one of the “Top Forty Under 40 successful young professionals who give back to the community” by Style Magazine in Richmond, VA. Noah is also an adjunct faculty member at Virginia Commonwealth University where he teaches Design Rebels a course on socially conscious graphic design.
Posts from Noah

Serge Fenenko
Managing Director at Novocortex B.V. Novocortex manages market introductions of innovative products. With the focus on online interaction with your clients. Novocortex is part of the Dutch Marketingfacts Network. Within the network, Novocortex is responsible for Interactive Strategy Audits and online advertising campaigns. Novocortex won a number of awards on advertising festivals, such as Golden Hammer, Golden Award of Montreux, Red Apple in Moscow and Kiev International Ad Festival (portfolio).
Serge Fenenko studied History in the former Soviet Union and Business Administration in the Netherlands, and holds an MBA of Rotterdam School of Management, the Erasmus University's business school.
Serge Fenenko’s Specialties: Interactive marketing using online and mobile channels, product marketing and business development with the focus on market introductions of innovative products, development and marketing of e-payments.
Posts from Serge