Marketing is key not only to promoting and selling commercial products, but it is also critical to building awareness for social issues and can help motivate people to do good deeds. A recent French campaign for literacy is an eye-catching promotion that makes a viewer do a double-take and view an advertisement in a new way. In this campaign, the images look like high fashion, but their appeal is for more than generating revenue.
The campaign won the prestigious ‘Yellow Pencil’ award from the Designers and Art Directors Club (D&AD) – one of the highest honors in the annual awards show. View the ads and see the campaign for yourself. Then, think about how this approach might be used for other public service awareness campaigns.
Group Activities and Discussion Questions:
1. Discuss the impacts of literacy in terms of a global economy.
2. Show the advertising series in class:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/18/literacy-campaign-poster-award_n_3112109.html3. Are these effective ads? Why or why not?
4. Divide students into teams. Have each team select a non-profit or public interest topic to address.
5. What are key messages that would be effective? Target audience to reach with the campaign?
6. Finally, have students create storyboards or ads.
Source: Huffington Post, 4/18/13
