It's an emergency!

Advertis-Aid calls out the best in all of us. It encourages the creation of advertisements in support of humanitarian causes. Its mission is to provide advertising creators around the world with the funding they need to produce communication campaigns.

To accomplish this, Advertise-Aid is organizing a competition. This site, www.advertisaid.org, will become an international reference site for humanitarian organizations. Those with very limited budgets can find concepts here, and advertising creators can find new inspiration.

For all of us who spend our days chewing on pencils, bashing keyboards, listening patiently to clients and putting up with our bosses, Advertis-Aid holds out an opportunity to show what we have always wanted to do with our profession and our skills.

It is something that goes far beyond eking out another 1% or 1.5% in sales of some brand of yogurt, automobile or detergent. The campaign strategies that Advertis-Aid is asking us to submit for this competition are not aimed at stealing market share from competitors. Rather, they are designed to steal lives away from hunger, disease and impending death.

This is an opportunity to show whether we are really, seriously, good. There are no grand juries, no golden statuettes. All the participants vote, and the top prizes are financial support to go toward producing other humanitarian campaigns.

So read the rules and get moving.

And above all, get moving soon. For the deadline is all too real: people are dying out there.

Uli Wiesendanger
Co-founder of TBWA Worldwide