More women should die of old age

Heartbreaking video from Breast Cancer Research Trust in New Zealand. But in a different way it looks at first sight.
“More women should die of old age. The sooner we get donations, the sooner we’ll find a cure”
Gold at the Cannes Lions this year. 

Every signature helps save our seas

A Silver Lion at Cannes for these three pieces of art from Greenpeace.
“Every signature helps save our seas.”

The Great Schlep

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

Ok ok awards can’t feed the hungry but some of the winners at the Cannes Lions are too special not to blog about.
Tonight The Great Schlep campaign from the Jewish Council for Education and Research won a Cyber Lion. Sarah Silverman tells, in this campaign from 2008, the Jewish grandparents to vote for Barack Obama. Old Floridian Jews are the most important demographic in the presidential election. They make up about 5% of the voters in a swing state with 27 electoral college votes.
Read more about the background in this article from the Los Angeles Times.

Osocio: Awards can’t feed the hungry

Stealourideas.com is a new website made by duo Jon & Adam, recently left their respective agencies in New York, who were used to getting ideas stolen - and decided to make it official.

Just for fun I asked them to make a concept for Osocio and they came with these three ads (click images to enlarge).
It plays on a human truth about how a lot of social advertising is done for the wrong reasons (awards where the work doesn’t actually run) and how it needs to make a difference in the real world. Jon & Adam feel this is a needed message that your brand can get behind during this award season, seeing as how your site acts as an in-between for both advertising people and social activism.

“Every year hundreds of PSAs are done for the wrong reasons.
Help us to create social advertising that actually makes a difference.”

Osocio fully agree! As Osocio blogger Armando said last year: “We’re in the business of changing behaviours, not winning awards.”
And don’t forget to see our updates about the Cannes Lions 2009 next week :-)
Thanks Jon & Adam.

Enough about us. Take a look at Stealourideas.com and don’t be shy, ask a concept for yourself, brand or ngo.

Humanitarian message to CEOs

We’re in the middle of the advertising award season and the High Mass at Cannes is nearby, the Cannes Lions. The people from humanitarianlion.com wants a new award, the Humanitarian Lion, an award for social advertising in any form.
Now they ask world’s leading advertisers to convince the Cannes Lions Festival to create this category.

The Interactive Climate Thermometer

This video has been made by Y&R Interactive Israel & Mizbala for Oxfam GB as part of the YouTube Cannes Young Lions Ad Contest. Very smart use of the media.
See also these videos from Greenpeace, almost the same idea.
More about the contest next week.

Good 50x70 2009 winners

Regular Osocio visitors knows about the Good 50x70 yearly poster contest. It’s already the third edition this year.
The Good 50x70 Jury has finished its deliberations and settled on the 210 best responses. This year the judging was made harder than ever due to the vast number of entries received (4210).
The shortlisted posters are available to see in the Gallery on the Good 50x70 website.

I love this contest especially because of it’s worldwide approach. And every year it is a good momentum to evaluate how we look towards causes and design.
I choose two favourites in each categorie to show here.

Related posts:
- 50x70 (2007)
- Good 50x70 2008 winners

Child labour

GROWING LABOUR / Sameera Kapila / Netherlands Antilles

Every time you have unprotected sex, a little doubt is born

To mark the International Aids Day, all radio stations in Israel (20 different competitors) joined broadcasting together, and aired a 1 minute radio spot simultaneously at precisely 07:59, the highest rating time of the day. The simultaneous spot from the Israel Aids Task Force which was based on the insight that “Every time you have unprotected sex, a little doubt is born” asked people to switch radio station and see for themselves that they could not escape the “little” doubt.

The results:
- 1 radio spot, aired 1 day only, reached one third of the country’s population.
- The event made headlines and was covered extensively by all radio stations, but also by TV news broadcasts, internet sites and daily papers
- The number of visitors to the Aids Task Force website increased by 56% (Google Analytics).
- HIV testing increased by 41% making December 2008 the highest HIV test period ever.

The Radio Event, created by Shalmor Avnon Amichay/Y&R Interactive for the Aids Task Force, won a Merit at the 2009 One Show Awards.

Related post from the Israel Aids task force: Aids: Doubt Kills

What Goes Around Comes Around

New York based agency Big Ant International have won a Gold Pencil for Design (Public Service Poster) at the One Show Design Awards with their work for Global Coalition for Peace. Four posters were designed to wrap around poles, campaigning for an end to the war in Iraq.
Absolute brilliant use of the media and the message.

“What Goes Around Comes Around. Stop the Iraq War.”

Change the Web Challenge now open for submissions

Yesterday the Social Actions’ Change Web Challenge started. The challenge is about building innovative tools to help people to find and share opportunities to take action on the websites, blogs, and social networks that we all visit everyday.

The Web Challenge builds on the success of online competitions such as NetSquared’s Mashup Challenge, Advanta’s Ideablob Competition, Ashoka’s Open Sourcing Solutions, The Knight News Challenge, The Case Foundation’s Giving Challenges and The American Express Card Members Competition. 

Participants will build web applications that draw on Social Actions’ open database of 40,000+ actions people can take across a range of issues. Social Actions aggregates opportunities to make a difference from over 30 online platforms, including VolunteerMatch, Kiva.org, DonorsChoose.org, Care2 and Change.org.