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War is for children, according to the latest campaign from War Child Canada.
Following the award-winning “Camp Okutta” campaign from late 2007, War Child again tapped its growing group of industry partners to produce this year’s online and television campaign.
John St., the agency behind Camp Okutta, created the new two-and-a-half minute spot that has been posted to YouTube. It opens with a woman searching for a rifle amid the clutter in her garage.
“It was at our town hall meeting,” she says. “Someone mentioned that these children are fighting a war and that they didn’t have the necessary supplies. So I’m going to send this gun to a child soldier who needs it.”
While uplifting music plays, she wraps the rifle and addresses it to a child soldier in Uganda.
That’s followed by scenes of people rallying to help kids fight their wars: setting up knife donation bins at hockey arenas, organizing school pledge drives, and putting up lawn signs that say “Help child soldiers fight.”
The spot concludes with crowd chanting “Keep kids fighting,” followed by the super “We’re supporting the problem if we’re doing nothing to stop it” and a throw to the microsite HelpChildSoldiers.com.
The site picks up on the community activism theme and provides information on petitions, donations and grass roots activities.
The online film will also run as a 30-second execution on television throughout December, with MuchMusic, MTV Canada, CBC and several Rogers-owned channels donating air time. The televised version ends with a throw to WarChild.com, in addition to the campaign’s microsite.
War Child also put up posters in major cities across Canada yesterday.
Public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, which became a communications partner after the Camp Okutta campaign, began a social media outreach program Monday, sending “donate a knife” boxes to 20 media outlets and key Canadian bloggers. The box contains literature explaining War Child’s global efforts.
James Topham, director of marketing for War Child Canada, said the Camp Okutta campaign received overwhelmingly positive feedback and has been adopted by high school and university teachers as part of their curricula.
“We wanted a development from [Camp Okutta], as opposed to going back to the same well,” Topham said. “The last campaign was shocking right up front, whereas I think this one is a lot more subtle. You have to provoke to some extent, or else you just got lost in the chatter these days.”
War Child is a global organization dedicated to providing humanitarian aid to child soldiers and war-affected children.
