I heard a facinating story on NPR while driving to work a while back. It was about John Breen and his efforts to prepare his son for the vocabulary section of his upcoming SATs. John is a computer programmer who takes world hunger very seriously. So he bundled these three things into a website called Freerice.com that has donated more than 24 billion grains of rice to fight world hunger while at the same time, improving the vocabulary of users.
I first thought, "Wow, that's amazing." My second thought was, "Thank God that guy did it. If an ad agency had that assignment they'd have fucked it up."
Seriously, think about what your agency would have done. Probably spent a ton of money and time on research. Next, they'd create a TV campaign and buy media placements. They might do some print or posters or some other targeted OOH. At the end of the day, they'd have a killer campaign that would have raised world hunger awareness and maybe even got some rice to people who need it. Of course, they would have spent tens of millions of dollars in the process.
Breen spent maybe two or three months programming a site and then let it lose on the internet. The cost was probably several nights and weekends of his free time. But he reaped enough rice to feed 950,000 for a day.
The challenge to all of us is this: If we take TV off the table, what would we do that would move the needle? Ask yourself that question every time you meet your client or agency.
