Digital tools have irrevocably changed the ad business, but have been particularly beneficial to marketers in the non-profit space. With the advent of social media, cash-strapped charities now have a whole suite of tools to cheaply deploy their message.
Ads for People: Selling Ethics in the Digital Age, an art show on through May 25 at OCAD University, a Toronto-based art and design school that’s home to one of Canada’s top ad programs, explores these themes through the eyes of curator Lisa Smith.
Marketing asked OCAD professor and former Grey Canada exec Carl Jones to pick three ads from the show and explain their significance.
Operation Christmas
Lowe and Partners
Colombian Ministry of Defense Program of Humanitarian Attention to the Demobilised (PAHD)
Knowing from interviews with ex-guerrilla combatants that they often thought about home during holiday season, Lowe and PAHD set up trip wires that would activate giant decorated Christmas trees deep in the jungle to light up alongside a written message. Later, word of the campaign spread across the globe on social media and in the press.
“In regular advertising for clients we use the ideas of ambient or guerrilla advertising. That concept was taken by the Colombian government into the jungle in order to get their message across. It was very powerful for the target market.”
The Girl Store
StrawberryFrog
Designed to “shed light on the global challenge of educating young girls,” The Girl Store is a website supported by a film series and several experiential displays. Taking its cues from retail marketing, the site is designed to look like an online clothing store — only instead of buying clothes consumers can buy school supplies for girls in India.
“This uses the tools and techniques advertisers use in retail. The same techniques that would be used to sell clothing are being used to help girls. For a small amount of money, something controversial was created that sparked interest and then social media, newspapers and TV programs talked about the message and got it out.”
People for Pro-choice
Condoms4Life, Armed Defense-campaign for armed self-defense
These websites use crowdsourcing to spread their campaign messages, offering PDFs of their ads for supporters to download, print or share online.
“They’re using digital media, then turning to the consumer to print it and place the media. It’s the consumer who invests the money, prints it and puts it where they think the message will be the most effective. It’s a very interesting way of mixing medias.”
