Mosquitoes are more than just a nuisance in many parts of the world, where they carry the deadly malaria virus. To raise awareness for World Malaria Day recently, the Canadian Red Cross took over Toronto’s busy Dundas Square with an installation featuring 28 oversized ‘mosquitoes’ being kept away from an image of a sleeping child who was protected by a net.
The blown-up images of mosquitoes appeared on signs featuring information about how malaria is transmitted, and directed passersby to donate at malariabites.net.
‘We chose to show the good side of what you can do by showing the child sleeping inside the net with the dangers on the outside,’ explains Hylton Mann, ACD at Toronto-based Juniper Park. ‘Children dying is not very nice news to give to people. We wanted to find a way to do it without actually showing dead children.
‘Ultimately, we needed to arm people with information and compel them to make a donation,’ says Mann. ‘Mosquitoes are even scarier looking when you see them [blown up] bigger.’
‘Part of our intent with a piece like this is to get into the news and reach an even wider audience,’ he continues. The ploy worked: the installation caught the attention of media outlets like CBC News.
advertiser: Tanya Elliott, director of public affairs, Ontario, Canadian Red Cross
agency: Juniper Park
CDs: Terry Drummond, Alan Madill
ACD/AD: Hylton Mann
ACD/copywriter: Andy Linardatos
client services: Kendra Hum, Maya Zaremba
producer: Debbie Ingham
photographer: Bela Tibor Kozma
You are cordially invited to submit your new, dead clever and previously unrevealed campaigns to editorial director Mary Maddever at mmaddever@brunico.com and CD Stephen Stanley at sstanley@brunico.com, co-curators of strategy’s Creative space.
