This weekend, you probably won’t have time for Amnesty International

Guilt is a powerful emotion. But will it work on you?

Cossette Montreal bet on it with this December, 2012 work for Amnesty International’s Write for Rights. Titled “Saturday”, it contrasts all of the mundane things we do on the weekend with the desperate needs, of prisoners of conscience, for advocacy and help:

Amnistie Internationale - Le samedi 8 décembre from La Cavalerie on Vimeo.

I’m ambivalent about the use of guilt in general, but considering that Amnesty is probably just trying to remind its committed supporters of how little it asks of them (and how much they can accomplish) through Write For Rights, it may have been just the thing.

It’s also an example of how much can be accomplished with very little money, when people are really behind the cause. The director of the ad (and one of my regular collaborators), Dominique Laurence, told me in his submission that the whole thing was shot in one location in Montreal, in just nine hours, for less than $5000! With free media online, that puts spreading a powerful PSA campaign well within the reach of many cause marketers.

(English version after the break.)

The AOTW link wasn’t embeddable, but I found this:

If there is an official YouTube/Vimeo link in English, please mention it in the comments and I’ll update.