A lot of the organisations we work with have incredibly powerful stories to tell about the people they work with and the work that they do. Condensing these stories into evocative and actionable campaign messages has always been a challenge for charitable and non-profit organisations, but as we compete for people’s time around the web it is increasingly important to make a impactful first impression.
Of course, one of the great advantages of digital is that you can offer people pathways to more information and more ways to interact with a campaign. But the initial messaging is as important as it’s ever been.
So last Friday at our breakfast session we each shared some of our favourite examples of campaign creative that delivered a powerful story in a short, accessible medium.
http://www.spaysnotstrays.org/
This is an oldie but still one that we really like – the site quickly conveys the key campaign message – that if cats are not spayed or neutered we will be overrun by kitties – whilst the site is cute and shareable, it delivers a shocking message that two breeding cats and their offspring could create 11.6 million cats over 9 years.
What we liked about It Gets Better was the way that a large amount of content has been unified and packaged under a clear message.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAqEsLnT8_8]
We felt this was an incredibly emotive way of delivering the simple idea that AIDS treatments paid for by donations can make a real difference.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-8PBx7isoM]
Another moving video, ‘Embrace Life’ again played with narrative and situational context to help deliver meaning quickly and effectively. We thought that bringing the ‘crash’ into the living room was a powerful way of focussing on positive outcomes / preventative solutions rather than using shock tactics for the dangers of not wearing a seatbelt. Having said that, we also noted the ‘Drink Driving Pub Crash’ advert.
A fantastic immersive environment from Volkswagen, helping sell the idea of the effects of small decisions on headline costs. We discussed how the time spent on site and engagement with content were probably at an extremely high level, but the potential for the content to be actually found and then shared amongst networks, in this example, was probably lower than in a single video on a trusted platform like youtube.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJJgl36i3vs]
Again we were engaged by the idea of using the effects and human impacts of the issue to frame the storytelling angle in the Awful Fan video by Shelter. Children from Newham drew pictures of their situations and narrated the stories, which were then compiled into a playful but serious animation to highlight the effects of dangerous housing.
Do you have any other examples you really liked? We’d love to hear more about them in the comments…
