David Gianatasio at Muse by Clio, sent me this PSA for comment. It’s not your average ad about drug addiction. Jake Reilly, a Senior Copywriter at Venables Bell & Partners in San Francisco, California, does not suffer from debilitating drug addiction. But he says he has friends who do, and he wanted to understand why they are in this situation. “I think I had always, sort of, just blamed what was happening to you, on you,” Jake admits, in a brave display of self-awareness. The other man, an actor playing the addicted friend, reframes the conversation. He explains that it’s no longer abo ..read more

Sandy Hook Promise is a not-for-profit organization founded by families of people who were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012. Their intent, “to honor all victims of gun violence by turning our tragedy into a moment of transformation.” This campaign, which premiered yesterday on American television, takes the cliché of back-to-school shopping ads, and quickly escalates into an immersive journey into the terror children feel when their school is attacked by deranged and gun-toting murderers. This year alone (and we’re only 3/4 of the way through it) 335 people have b ..read more

It’s one thing for Dove to change its own advertising to represent women better. But they’re just one advertiser in a sea of fakery, impossibility and stereotypes. Now they’ve partnered with Getty, the famous stock library, to introduce a new range of female-created images of women and non-binary people, called #showus. Representation changes reality, as anyone who’s ever had to search a stock library for a photo of a ‘female scientist’ or ‘female CEO’ knows. Let’s hope this does too. More detail, including some shocking stats on what poor representation of women does to women’s self-esteem ..read more

This is a new ( but so old and forgotten) concept of visual communication, which has this A-ha moment because it is known to everyone but has remained undefined in Art as an expression of perception. This is, at this time of technology and saturation of it, the return to the roots of Art, which is the observation of the world around us. We have forgotten to observe the world around us and that is why Art is either just repeated in its expression or is so separated from human-being, dehumanized, that it has become just an outline of the technologies that surround us. The book “Observism” by Z ..read more

Period poverty is a real thing, affecting women and girls all over the world – including in ‘rich’ countries like the UK. Many charities and NGOs are working to address it, but Hey Girls is a new sanitary product brand that’s helping to fix it via a ‘buy one, give one’ model. This ad ran on the front page of a major free newspaper in the UK this week, bringing to life what period poverty is and why it matters – especially if it’s you that’s got your period. Agency: Adam & Eve The post Period poverty, on a page first appeared at Osocio ..read more