Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Expansion of the Tap Project may lead to further Charitable Campaigns Developed by Ad Agencies

A project which begain last year by a small advertising boutique in efforts to gain public awareness and support for a charitable cause, has now evolved into a national campaign with hopes of global expansion in following years.
Drago5-the innovative advertising boutique-teamed up with thirteen additional agencies to kick-off what is labeled the Tap Project.
The Tap Project (http://tapproject.org/) benefits efforts by Unicef(http://www.unicef.org/) to provide clean drinking water to children in third world countries. The project requests that customers in participating restaurants (within particiapting cities) donate one dollar fur every glass of tap water, not bottled, they order, during the week of March 16th.
The campaign's success won Drago5 an award at the International Advertising Festival (http://www.canneslions.com/), for their creative innovation, as well as helped inspire the United Nations(http://www.un.org/) designation of World Water Day (http://www.worldwaterday.org/) on March 22nd.
Such a national effort has certainly caught on, expanding rapidly. With a pro-bono campaign such as the Tap Project earning such buzz and popularity for Drago5, this advertising boutique sets an example for other Advertising Agencies for discovering novel ways of promoting charitable causes.
Global expansion of this campaign-intended 2009-further demonstrates the powerful ability of advertising to impressively spread messages fast. Once such a campaign expands internationally, a cause such as this is likely to unify people across borders who can connect to a common cause, which they may feel otherwise disconnected to because of this relevance to those of another country-the children of third world countries.
Advertising agencies possess enormous power in promoting cause-related operations. Their support and advertising efforts helps them appeal to the public that employs them while embracing socially responsible actions. International advertising helps bridge the gap of ideas between one country to another-the gap existing between the awareness and perception of ideas, and more importantly, the resulting behaviors of those exposed. The Tap Project will soon profit from such international advertising capabilities, hopefully inspiring the development of more cause campaigns that can reap similar benefits.

[Elliot, Stuart. "Creative Juices Flow for Pro Bono Effort to Aid Global Water Projects." The New York Times 13 Feb. 2008. www.nytimes.com. 13 Feb. 2008. 13 Feb. 2008 . ]

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