The campaign of January came in loud and clear. It got the most votes from us: Aides - Graffiti, the great video made by TBWA\Paris for the French Aids awareness organization Aides.

A second place in January for three other campaigns:
- Victims declaration of Human Rights
- Hoax: 2028 The Movie - It Finally Ends
- Embrace life - always wear your seatbelt

Do check the article for more about the 8 tips that make a good charity website:

1. A mission
2. How sponsors will be helping
3. Photos of people the sponsors will be helping
4. Donate button
5. Donations to date
6. A funding goal
7. Keep in touch
8. How can people help

Drop a few comments if you know of any more tips on how to create a sucessful non-profit website.

I guess you already heard about the Pepsi Refresh Project. They are looking for people, businesses, and non-profits with ideas that will have a positive impact. Pepsi is accepting 1000 ideas every month will finance these projects. Very nice.
But why is the enormous worldwide campaign needed? Sounds not very sincere isn’t it?

The whole thing was irritating me this week and today Steve from zyozy.org send me the tip about the video’s as shown here. Is this a rip off!
Above the Pepsi refresh campaign video, made by TBWA Chiat Day, where synchronized webcammers interact with each other. And see the video from the Japanese band Sour below with their video that went viral last summer.

In partnership with Daily Motion, but also with a Youtube channel the animated films are a fun way to inform young europeans, but also engaging them with the web series by allowing them to vote on the theme/tip for the next episode.

The series depicts 3 super-heroes who try to save smokers and non-smokers from the negative effects of tobacco, by giving them absurd tips and advice. Chuck, Skinny and Loona, accompanied by Tapas, a masochistic freak of nature that won’t leave them alone, unify their strengths for better or for worst.

Nice trailer for The Rethink Scholarship, an $18,000 scholarship for aspiring art directors and designers to Langara College’s Communication and Ideation Design program. The winner will also receive a 3-month internship with Rethink.

Judging the winner is based on one thing: a sketchbook. The sketchbook can be any size in terms of width and height, but it must have a hard black cover. 

Déjà vu! This video and poster are protest items of the anti-capitalist, Indigenous, housing rights, labour, migrant justice, environmental, anti-war, community-loving, anti-poverty, civil libertarian, and anti colonial movement fighting at the coming Vancouver Olympics.

I was active at various protest movements in the early eighties and what I see at the Vancouver movement is almost a copy of what was going on 40 years ago. Protesting because the Olympics will take place on unceded Indigenous land I understand. Making the world aware of poverty and migrant justice I fully agree. But saying that the Olympics has acted as a fascist trojan horse since the Hitler games in 1933 is beyond all reality. And from a communications point of view it is very anti-productive. This is Godwin’s Law.

I guess what we are doing here at Osocio, covering the world where marketing and activism collide, is a fascist thing too.

Still want to read more? Check The Olympic Resistance Network.

In order to raise awareness for breast cancer agency McCann Erickson in Tel Aviv Israel initiated a cooperation with several daily newspapers and went up with the campaign “One in Nine”. They took the horoscope page and moved the reading for the Cancer sign several pages back, so that the reader would discover the cancer horoscope earlier than usual. The campaign was signed with “Early detection of cancer can save lives. Get yourself tested”.

One in Nine is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to raising public awareness of breast cancer, and to the promotion of the topic of breast health in Israel. Statistics indicate that one in every nine women in Israel will be forced to cope with breast cancer during her lifetime. One in Nine offers a broad range of services to women fighting breast cancer and to their families, while simultaneously carrying out widespread activities that help break the silence surrounding the disease.

One video and three print ads from the People of The United Methodist Church.
The campaign directed those inside and outside the church to 10thousanddoors.org to find out how to help after the Haitian earthquake, in any way they could. The point of the posters was simply to convey that faith + action = hope.

“Of all the things earthquakes can destroy, the human spirit is not one of them.
Find out how to to help the people of Haiti at 10thousanddoors.org."

The prayer wall at Facebook.

This multi-media campaign from Canada aimed at stopping child predators from soliciting children online. The campaign, entitled Predator Watch, is part of the work of the Children of the Street Society. It contains print and tv ads, posters and a web component. The last one is still under construction.

Two ads from the Utah Commission on Marriage (USA). Aim is to help people form and sustain a healthy and enduring marriage. The campaign website offer all kind of reading material on various subjects.

“If you want a stronger marriage, work on it together.”

Campaign for The Healing Place, a nonprofit organization in Raleigh USA. Their mission is to help rehabilitate homeless people with substance abuse issues. While most organizations focus on keeping people off the street, The Healing Place seeks to give people new skills and confidence that they can use to reignite their lives as functioning, and working, members of society.

This gorgeous video from the UK is part of a new campaign from Sussex Safer Roads Partnership (SSRP). The campaign, entitled Embrace Life, tackles the issue on the use/non-use of seat belts in a very different way. Avoiding the use of blood, gore or shock tactics, Embrace Life is provoking an emotional response in all viewers.

Neil Hopkins, Communications Manager, explains: “Embrace Life deals with the non-wearing of seatbelts by both drivers and passengers – which continues to be an issue not only in Sussex, but across the entire United Kingdom and EU, despite many years of high profile campaigning.”

“Sussex Police stop thousands of drivers every year for failing to either not restrain themselves properly, or restrain their passengers properly. In 2008, over 100 Fixed Penalty Notices were issued to drivers who failed to restrain their children properly in the vehicle – and one can only imagine the impact this would have had should those vehicles have been involved in a collision.”

Did you wash your hands after taking the mail?
Did you choose a password containing at least 15 numbers and 17 letters?
Did you turn off the gas? Are you sure of it?
Did you call your son at least 4 times?
Did you go back to check if you locked the car?
Did you remember to move the thesaurus dictionary slightly to the left?
Did you kill off all the mites hidden in your home?

And what did you do against cancer?
Book a checkup in our ambulatories. Early diagnosis con save your life.

Italian League for the Fight Against Cancer (Lega Italiana per la Lotta Contro i Tumori / LILT)

New campaign from MADD New Mexico (USA). Studies show that alcohol impacts the brain much more dramatically in teens than it does in adults. That is visualized in this artwork entitled Broken Teens.

Underage drinking is not just a youth problem. It is also very much an adult problem. Adults continue to allow those under the legal drinking age to drink—illegally—by selling alcohol to those under 21, providing or purchasing alcohol, looking the other way when teens openly talk about their drinking exploits, and refusing to hold other adults and youth accountable for breaking the law.

Broken Teens website:

The National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) unveiled today a new Internet resource in partnership with Google/YouTube and renowned ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi.
The video shows a typical 14-year old YouTube user who is passionate about dolphins but is being bullied and harassed by fictitious comments on site.  When he sees one particularly hurtful comment he reaches down, grabs the comment, and then responds to it in the remainder of the video.

According to new research from NCPC, young people state that disrespect is growing rapidly in the digital world and say they need help defining and restoring respect among their peers.
YouTube also has a safety center where users can report bullying and other aggressive behaviors on the site or get the valuable tips and information on how to prevent these problems.

I noticed it by myself that I seldom give comments at blogs anymore. And not because of bullying but due to disrespect and indifference most commenters expose these days. And like many friends do, the place to discuss all kind of issues is the safe environment of social networks. It makes blogs and places like YouTube less valuable.

See the video here.

Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Anan warns of the danger of excluding poor rural communities from the Internet:
“People lack many things: jobs, shelter, food, healthcare and drinkable water. Today, being cut off from basic telecommunications services is a hardship almost as acute as these other deprivations, and may, indeed reduce the chances of finding remedies to them.”

With this in mind Project FOCUS works with local organizations in rural Southwest Uganda to launch an Internet Café, providing access to information and communication previously unavailable to residents of the region. The Café will also provide technology skills training, a revenue source for a local community-run primary school, and allocate space and tools for the production of creative multi-media projects.
Web access provides communities with the opportunity to improve social welfare, and claim their voice in the global conversation on strategies for rural development. With this service, the local populace will benefit from direct links to job, educational, weather, and health information, as well as more efficient markets for produce and products.

The community Internet café will be administered by I.T. trained staff members from the local partner organization ICOD (Integrated Community Efforts for Development), and will provide technology skills training, a revenue source for a local community-run primary school, and the space and tools for the production of creative multi-media projects. Groups of local teachers, farmers, and healthcare workers in Lyantonde will be connected with respective groups in the U.S., the latter assisting the former in utilizing best-practices while searching the web for relevant materials and networks.

For this project $25.000 is needed. More at the Project FOCUS microsite.

In case you know the work of M.C. Escher this new campiagn looks familiar. The campaign promotes the green HSBC insurance, which is a new eco-friendly product from the Brazilian insurance company.

“When you realize, it might be too late.
Acquire the Green Insurance from HSBC now and help protect nature.”