Caring and Sharing

Pro-bono work for charitable causes often produces the most creative advertising. This maybe because the creatives are more committed to this kind of work than, say, flogging 4x4 wheel drives, or perhaps it is because the clients tend to stay more in the background.

A fine example is a recent campaign created by Publicis Dialog (of San Francisco) for Project Open Hand and photographed digitally by Claudia Goetzelmann. Project Open Hand is a local charity that provides food and care to people in need. It was founded by a woman who started serving home meals to people in her apartment building who were dying on AIDS.

According to former Publicis Dialog executive creative director Tom Kavanaugh,the goal of the campaign was to bring to life the spirit of the slogan " Food with Love" that still guides the organization. The cross-stitched samplers were handmade by a local crafts club and were shot against walls to match light and were later superimposed over the walls in post-production to look like they were hand-painted there. The POH clients were shot either at POH's kitchen or at the person's residence.

"The cross stitched samplers as murals against urban backdrops help reinforce the concept of bringing a traditional caring perspective to the often harsh urban environments of the people who use the services," says Kavanaugh.

Goetzelmann shot the whole thing digitally using a 22 -megapixel Leaf camera. The post-production, which combined the walls, stitching and people, was done by Fat Cat Digital in San Francisco. "Fat Cat did amazing work on the very difficult challenge of making a detailed piece of dimensional art look as if he had been painted on very uneven surfaces," says Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh has also nothing but praise for Goetzelmann's efforts: "As well as being a great overall photographer, she was compassionate and caring enough to bring the emotion out of her subjects and also make her services affordable."

The campaign has ran in local outdoor transit media such as bus sides, underground subways and stations, and in local magazines. Since it has been running, donations to POH have tripled.