Top 5 ads of the week: LeBron’s tattoo, Budweiser’s Google search
Soliciting student ideas to fight gun violence, Spanish gamers play for free burgers, and Powerade’s World Cup dreams.
Gun violence and gun safety PSAs have long existed, but since the 2012 tragedy at Sandy Hook, that work became more frequent, and with an emotional urgency we had rarely seen before. As creative, inspiring, and heartbreaking so many of these awareness campaigns have been, the reality is that there have been 180 school shootings in the intervening years, not to mention the tragedies in Vegas and Orlando, among others not at schools. Which is enough for any sane person to question the effectiveness of any of these gun violence PSAs. But the kids of Parkland changed all that, reinvigorating the debate and call to action like never before. And now an inspired collection of ad industry execs and agencies, led by The One Club and MullenLowe, are kicking off a new initiative that aims to use the power and scale of the creative communication industry to amplify the ideas young people have to help solve this issue. Onward!