Charitable Giving Gets Boost with Innovative Television Ad Campaign; Ads Hit As Post Roll on Beet.TV

http://www.beet.tv/2008/12/a-goat-instead.html


Starting today and for the next two weeks, Beet.TV's 800 videos will feature a 30 second post-roll ad campaign for "Changing the Present," a nonprofit organization that connects consumers with a choice of 1500 charitable gifts.

Earlier this month, I interviewed Executive Creative Director Kevin McKeon of StrawberryFrog, the highly regarded advertising agency responsible for the campaign.

The ads begin as conventional commercials for pricey cars or jewelry and then there's a shock: The new Lexus is a goat, in an appeal to provide funding for livestock for impoverished farmers. A jewelry box contains a hypodermic needle in an appeal for funding for polio vaccinations for entire villages.

"It's just to get people to think about gift giving in a different way and to do it in a way that's unexpected for that category," he says. "They're usually very sappy or make you feel guilty. [Our purpose is] to bring a little humor to it, to not make people feel like you're a bad person if you don't do it, but just to get them to remember that idea."

These are great ads for an important cause. We are pleased at Beet.TV to host the ad for the next couple of weeks. We hope that our colleagues in the online video content creation and syndication will integrate more public service messages into videos; it's important.

The post roll ad is being implemented and hosted by Blip.tv.

--Kelsey Blodget, Associate Producer