Round table: How a local campaign went global - Embrace Life

The most successful social campaign from this winter is definitely the Embrace Life campaign from the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership (SSRP). An road safety campaign without shocking images is pointing us to a new approach in communication.
The video already got more than 1.4 million views on YouTube. A fan made a group page on Facebook. And here on Osocio the pageviews are still coming in.
I got many questions about the campaign so I decided to do a co-creation interview with the help from our fans on Facebook and Linkedin.
Thanks Nedra, Tatjana, Reuben and Bas.

The man behind the campaign is Neil Hopkins, the Communications Manager from SSRP. Neil was very helpful with answering our questions. Read it after the break.

Round table: Better World Advertising

“I started Better World Advertising (BWA) because I saw the power that social marketing could have in helping individuals, and society as whole, in solving issues that cause a lot of pain and suffering.  I still believe that getting information to people and delivering messages that motivate them to make better decisions has unlimited potential for good.”

As said by Les Pappas, President & Creative Director of San Fransisco and New York based social advertising and marketing agency Better World Advertising. Regular visitors of Osocio know the work of BWA very well. Time to talk with BWA. In this new chapter of the Round Table we spoke with Les Pappas and Emily Foran, Art Director at BWA. Again a collaboration with James David from The Groundswell Collective. This interview is crossposted at his great blog.

Round table: The Change

Branding is a thing typically left to corporations with the money to invest in coordinated marketing plans, but Jerry Stifelman and Sami Grover don’t believe it has to be that way.  The Change is the name of their firm, and they bring brand-building services to nonprofits and “good-for-the-world” businesses.

Visitors to the company website are immediately confronted with the motto: “The truth is your best tool.” Making use of an organization’s conviction, personality, and sense of mission are key to brand-building in their view, which they conceive of as apolitical. 

James David from The Groundswell Collective asked me to collaborate doing a interview with Jerry and Sami from The Change. That gives Osocio the opportunity to start a new serie: Round table. We will do interviews on a irregular basis with all kind of do gooders. Straight from the war zone of the design industry.
Do you want to read more? See Groundswell Talks, the interview serie at the Groundswell blog.

THE APPROACH

Osocio: What brought you to designing for good-for-the-world organizations?

Jerry Stifelman: I was doing a lot of work for youth-oriented brands like Puma, labels that derived their appeal from a sense of authenticity. I’m good at authenticity, because that’s what turns me on. To create something I find some core truth that works for me. Yet when that truth is overlaid onto a brand that’s essential mission is to sell stuff at the highest profit --it becomes uh, what do you call it, oh that’s right, a fucking lie. I started to think about this around the same time I started becoming hyper-aware of all the problems we’re facing in the world. And SUV’s had a lot to do with this. Being surrounded by SUV’s really set me off. I did a lot of SUV flyering at first.

Sami Grover: I’m no designer, at least not by background. My educational background is in language and linguistics, and my professional background is in publishing, but on the marketing side. I’ve always had an interest in sustainability, both on a personal and professional basis. I found The Change as I was moving to The States (for love). I’d just started writing for TreeHugger, and was looking for ways to align my professional life with good-for-the-world causes on a more full-time basis. Luckily Jerry seemed to see the need for a full-time sustain-a-geek and brought me onboard.