Social advertising and non-profit campaigns from around the globe

Flood victims need your clothes

Posted by Marc | 7-09-2006 22:19 | Category: Homelessness, Poverty, Social aid

These ads from the Romanian Red Cross became finalist at the 2006’s edition of New York Festivals (category International Design, Outdoor & Print Advertising) and at the Cresta Awards (category print).
Romanian advertising is the upcoming star, these ads prove that again. Although Romania had some dark years behind, they don’t forget their history.
These are agency TBWA Merlin’s first nominations at an international festival and the first signs of the agency’s creativity beeing acknowledged at an international level, after the TBWA and Merlin Advertising partnership.

The original copy of the romanian ads: Victimele inundatiilor au nevoie de hainele tale.
Victims of the floods need your clothes.
At the lower part of the ad: Cumpara pentru ei din magazinele Outwear.
Buy for them from the Outwear shops.

Radu Olteanu, TBWA Merlin copywriter: The “Flood victims need your clothes” campaign ads are not following the emotional trend that’s so common to all social campaigns made in Romania. The message is a simple one: Your clothes are not making them look cool, but they will for sure be very usefull. It’s time we made happier social campaigns in our country too.
This is how they came to the idea to make a special t-shirts collection. The fund raising is done through the Outwear shops.

Many thanks to Mihai for helped me out with the info about the campaign. He told me about the floods in Romania: “Well, in these past years we kept on having floods (because of poor organisation). Spring 2005 I remember two villages were flooded with high waters (only the top of the roofs could be seen) and that lasted for a week..... then In spring 2006, before Easter there were some floods, a couple of months later other floods in other parts of the country. And each time there were houses destroyed, people left homeless...”
Don’t believe it? See the pictures here at the Romanian Red Cross website