News

All the relevant news about social advertising, design and marketing from around the globe. In the right column news coming from our favourite social advertising and marketing blogs

Call to Action: new feature on YouTube for non-profits

This week, YouTube launched a new “Call to Action” feature for nonprofit partners, which allows them to use InVideo overlays to drive traffic to an off-YouTube web page, where they can collect signatures, email addresses, or even donations.
To pilot test the feature, YouTube placed a video supporting charity:water on its homepage last Sunday, featuring an overlay encouraging YouTube users to donate money to the cause. In that one day, charity:water received a whopping $10,000 from YouTube viewers. Granted, the fact that the video was featured on the homepage clearly had a huge impact on the turnout, but the success of the new Call-to-Action ads is likely going to be a boon for many non-profits.

If you’re a YouTube nonprofit partner, adding a Call to Action overlay is easy. Just go to “Edit Video” and fill out the fields in the section marked “Call to Action overlay.” All you have to do is include a short headline, ad text, a destination url, and upload an optional image, and the overlay will appear whenever someone watches your video.

If you’re a nonprofit organization in the U.S. or U.K. who hasn’t yet joined the YouTube Nonprofit Program, but would like to gain access to Call to Action and other special benefits, you can apply now at www.youtube.com/nonprofits. 

Source youtube.com
Submitted by Marc | 29 Mar 2009 | Permalink

Design Ignites Change: student program channels the power of design thinking to ignite social change

Worldstudio, together with the Adobe Foundation’s signature program Adobe Youth Voices, announced Design Ignites Change, a program that encourages talented high school and college students to use the power of design to address social issues in their local communities through substantive public projects. Students are encouraged to develop projects that will stimulate thought, dialogue, action and ultimately change.

To date, Design Ignites Change has engaged 17 colleges and universities who are now hard at work on responses to such pressing global issues as racism, economic inequality and climate change.

A major component of the initiative is a mentoring program through which college and university students, educators and creative professionals, work with underserved high school students to develop projects that will benefit their own communities, while giving them a voice around important social issues. The program will also serve to introduce these high school students to the creative professions as a career option. A guided option for the mentoring program will result in community billboard campaigns around the theme of tolerance.

“The response from the education and business communities has been phenomenal,” said Worldstudio’s Andréa Pellegrino. “They see Design Ignites Change as a breakthrough initiative that will bring visibility to innovative solutions addressing a range of social issues, happening at the college level, as well as a way to instill the importance of giving back to one’s community in the next generation, through the high school mentoring component.”

More information: Design Ignites Change

Source Social Design Notes
Submitted by Marc | 13 Mar 2009 | Permalink

Change.org Launches 7 New Blogs

Change.org launched seven new blogs to expand their network to 19 blogs covering the most important issues facing te world.
The new sites include Autism, Education, Global Health, Health Care, Human Trafficking, Poverty in America, and Sustainable Food. They have hired an amazing team of experts/activists to lead each community, selected from more than 1500 applicants.

You can find the full list of the blogs on the Causes page.

Submitted by Marc | 4 Jan 2009 | Permalink

Social advertising wins at Dutch Gouden Loekie

The provocative video from the Dutch Socialist Party (SP) about the bad situation in the homecare have won the first price at the Gouden Loekie contest. At the Gouden Loekie the Dutch audience vote for their favourite commercial.
The SP spend only €10.000 for mediatime and got a lot of free publicity. It is the first time a social advertising campaign wins gold at this contest.
Second price is for the Dutch World Wildlife Fund (WNF) with the video Miracles.

More about the campaign from the SP in our post It’s homecare, no market.

‘For human homecare’ from the Socialist Party:

World Wildlife Fund (WNF) video ‘Miracles’:

Submitted by Marc | 19 Dec 2008 | Permalink

The Trevor Project achieves accreditation from the American Association of Suicidology

The Trevor Project, the non-profit organization that operates the only nationwide, around-the-clock crisis and suicide prevention helpline for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth, became the only crisis and suicide prevention service delivery program specifically serving the LGBTQ community to be officially accredited by the American Association of Suicidology (AAS) this week. The Trevor Project is now considered an exemplary crisis and suicide prevention program performing according to nationally recognized standards.

“Receiving accreditation from AAS affirms that, clinically, our crisis and suicide prevention services for young people are top-tier, and positions us as a model of program excellence for other crisis centers,” said Charles Robbins, executive director and CEO, The Trevor Project. “As the only accredited, LGBTQ-specific crisis and suicide prevention helpline, we know our services are vital and we will remain committed to expanding our programs and national outreach.”

See also this related campaign from The Trevor Project: I’m Glad I Failed at Suicide.

Submitted by Marc | 14 Nov 2008 | Permalink

Ad Council pledges not to use great apes in ads

After learning from PETA how chimpanzees and orangutans who are used in advertising endure abuse as part of their behind-the-scenes training, Peggy Conlon, president and CEO of the New York-based Ad Council, has signed PETA’s “Great Ape Humane Pledge,” committing that the council will never use great apes in its ads. Because many of the CEOs of top U.S. ad agencies sit on the Ad Council’s board, PETA will request that they follow the Ad Council’s progressive lead and sign the pledge. The council--which created the category of public service advertising in 1942--has never used great apes in ads.

“Chimpanzees and orangutans belong with their families, not on ad sets where they are forced to perform under cruel and frightening conditions,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “No commercial product is worth tearing babies from their mothers and beating them into becoming ‘actors.’”

Source PETA blog
Submitted by Marc | 10 Nov 2008 | Permalink

Blogger.com banned in Turkey

Google groups, porn sites, slide.com, wordpress, YouTube… Blogger.com is the latest addition to this list of banned web sites in Turkey.
After the passing of the new law, web sites in Turkey can be banned without a warning for several reasons:

• Obscenity: This of course leads to a whole lot of questions like “How to define obscenity”
• Promoting drug use
• Provoking suicide: Another open-to-interpretation clause. Would a movie about a suicidal teenager be promoting suicide?
• Sexuel abuse of children
• Insult to Turkishness and Ataturk
• Prostitution
• Gambling
• Providing material harmful to public health

Although the law, passed seemingly to fight child porn, when the statistics are examined, the main reason of the banning of web sites, seems to be obscenity, which is 3 times more than sites shut down for child molestation.
Besides these clauses, personal insult can lead to the banning of the web site as it happenende with Adnan Oktar vs. Richar Dawkins in which Adnan Oktar, a religious writer, claimed Richard Dawkins web site was insulting his book. Therefore. The web site of a well known scientist was shut down to Turkish users with a singfle click. Adnan Oktar seems to be the reason of many other web site bannings lately, including the web site of one of the biggest newspaper’s in Turkey (Vatan) and atheist forum.

Sites are shut down, without a single warning to the owner and instead of removing the specific harmful material in question, web servers are shut down completely leading millions of web site and blog owners frustrated. That’s what has happened with geocities.com and unfortunately with blogger.com as of today (October, 24th 2008).
The banning of web sites not only violates our freedom to reach information, it also affects our work since many people earn money through blogs or other digital media. Moreover, what ever happenned to the principle: “One is innocent until proven guilty?”

Blog users in the past organized a protest in the near past in which thay shut down their blogs in order to raise public awareness on the issue. The details of the movement can be found at www.sansuresansur.org.
However, with the news of blogger being shut down, the situation seems more and more hopeless in terms of freedom of speech and freedom of press.

Source Elma+Alt+Shift
Submitted by Marc | 26 Oct 2008 | Permalink

NSPCC wins Gold Star Award

NSPCC, the childline from the UK, has won the second annual international Gold Star Award for Excellence in Fundraising DRTV last wednesday. The award was announced at the International Fundraising Congress (IFC) which was held in the Netherlands.
NSPCC’s winning advert for the Childline telephone helpline showed a young girl barricading herself in her room and dialling the Childline number, which rings without being answered. A lack of resources for Childline means that NSPCC is unable to answer one in three calls made to it.

Read all about the award at UK Fundraising.

See also this post at Osocio about the nominees.

The announcement of the Gold Star DRTV Awards at 15 October:

The award winning video from NSPCC:

Source UK Fundraising
Submitted by Marc | 17 Oct 2008 | Permalink

13.6 million health bloggers in the USA

The USA counts now 13.6 million health bloggers according to a new report from Envision Solutions. This report provides the most detailed portrait of the health blogosphere to date. It reveals that millions of U.S. adults are actively writing on health-focused blogs. The majority of health bloggers are female and 38% are either African American or Hispanic.
Marketing activity taking place in the health blogosphere has increased.  For example, the number of bloggers reporting inquiries from public relations professionals jumped 57% between 2006 and 2007. Also, respondents were more likely to report running advertising on their Weblogs.

Read more at The Health Care Blog
Download the report here for free

Source The Health Care Blog
Submitted by Marc | 4 Sep 2008 | Permalink

World’s Best Presentation Contest 2008

One of the most popular web presentation services has announced their 2008 winners, with 2 of them being focused on climate and refugee issues.

Source Slideshare
Submitted by Armando Alves | 3 Sep 2008 | Permalink

Animal charity launches social network for pet lovers

A new social network designed for pet lovers, ‘All About Pets’, aims to challenge generic sites like MySpace when it officially launches today (1 September 2008).  Billed as the ‘Facebook for pet lovers’, www.allaboutpets.org.uk has been developed by Britain’s pet charity The Blue Cross to give pet lovers a new way to communicate and share experiences or advice about their pets. 

All About Pets hopes to fill the gap in the market created when sites like Facebook opened their doors to everyone.  As one of the UK’s oldest animal charities, The Blue Cross has over 110 years of experience with pets and their owners and has drawn upon this to create a site that appeals to animal lovers around the world.

Built by digital agency DVA, the site has already proved its popularity since its beta launch in March this year with 450,000 unique visits from 142 countries and more than 6,869 members signed up to date. All About Pets is being promoted on- and offline by digital specialists Hot Cherry and with the help of an innovative online viral campaign which allows users to send personalised talking pets to their friends. Since its launch at the end of July, the viral has been viewed over 100,000 times – see www.talkingpets.org.

Laura Dobson, spokesperson for All About Pets said: “With millions of members, sites like Facebook seem set on becoming all things to all people.  What sets All About Pets apart is its dedication to pet lovers.  The site offers a huge amount of information on all aspects of pet care and every function is easy to access and highly relevant.  We know pet owners love talking about their pets so we’ve created a fun place for them to come together online and share their own experiences and advice.”

Submitted by Marc | 1 Sep 2008 | Permalink

New study: Movies makes teens smoke

Tobacco promotions of smoking in movies cause teenagers to start smoking according to a new study done by the USA National Cancer Institute. The report found the tobacco industry spent more than $13 billion on smoking-related advertising and promotion in 2005. The report found that even brief exposure to advertising influences adolescent attitudes. Three-quarters or more of hit movies depict cigarette smoking, and specific brands can be identified in about one third.
But the report found that mass media campaigns aimed at reducing smoking do work, especially when combined with other tobacco-control strategies.

Source Reuters
Submitted by Marc | 25 Aug 2008 | Permalink

Social action widget is a game-changer

Today a new widget is lauched. It recommends to readers of blogs or websites related ways to take action. The widget automatically identifies the keywords on any page and lists social change campaigns related to the content of the page. These campaigns are gathered from social action platforms like Kiva, DonorsChoose, Change.org, GlobalGiving, Care2, Idealist.org, and fourteen others.
Because the new widget pulls actions from 20 social action platforms, it can recommend actions based on a wide variety of content.
Social Actions founder Peter Deitz is also extremely excited about this project. He has described the widget as a “game-changer.”

After cut and paste the widget snippet code into a website, the widget automatically scans the content of each web page on which it appears and identifies the top three keywords for that page. The widget then searches for related campaigns on 20 social action platforms. It then automatically loads the top three campaigns for the keywords, with the option to discover more. As the content of a site changes, the widget checks to see if there are new keywords. As a result, readers are always connected to fresh and relevant calls to action.

Get the widget here.

This how the widget looks like:

Source Social Actions Blog
Submitted by Marc | 20 Aug 2008 | Permalink

148 Turkish websites in protest against government ban

This week 148 153 (the number is rising) Turkish websites are shut down as a protest against the government ban. The Turkish government blocks YouTube since January this year. And in the last few weeks various other international websites like DailyMotion are also blocked. The 148 website as listed here show this text at their frontpage:
Bu siteye erişim kendi kararıyla engellenmiştir

The protest will go on until Wednesday, August 20th.
Our friend and adblogger Firat from Elmaaltshift is one of the participants. Websites like YouTube and Dailymotion are very important for adbloggers.

A Turkish court issued a similar order in March last year, after a row between Turkish and Greek users escalated and resulted in insults of Atatürk, a serious offense in Turkey. At the moment it is unclear why the Turkish government is banning various websites.

Update 26-10-08: Blogger.com banned in Turkey

Source Anafikir
Submitted by Marc | 16 Aug 2008 | Permalink

ZAC: Free browser for autistic kids

ZAC is the first web browser developed specifically for children with autism, and autism spectrum disorders such as Asperger syndrome, pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), and PDD-NOS. Children touch it, use it, play it, interact with it, and experience independence through ZAC.
ZAC is the zone that will permit a child to interact directly with games and activities that cater specifically to kids who display the characteristics of autism spectrum disorders, like impairments in social interaction, impairments in communication, restricted interests and repetitive behavior. ZAC has been an effective tool for kids with low, medium and high functioning autism.

The ZAC browser is named because of Zackary, the grandson of the developers. At an early age Zackary began displaying classic signs of a pervasive development disorder (PDD) and was diagnosed as severely autistic in 2005.

Source ALR blog
Submitted by Marc | 12 Aug 2008 | Permalink

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