Creativity for Social Good

Creativity for social good is a tool that I personally have very little faith in, numerous examples have been used especially in recent years in advertising and many have failed.  I may be cynical in the fact that I have no faith in a community ideology. I believe that in England this came to an end with the destructive influence of Margret Thatcher;

"There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families."

This effect is most often seen in charity events and governmental schemes to better the world we live in, trying to encourage people to be safer, be more responsible and reinforce this idea of community. I can think of two particularly effective campaigns that have done this in recent years. The first is a European campaign to try and reduce the transmission of HIV aides whereby decidedly gruesome adverts were shown in places where it was believed that sexual intercourse may be instigated, such as night clubs, or strip clubs. These were then reinforced with hand outs of free condoms for seveal weeks to reinforce the message. Finally it was decided that the adverts (as shown below) were too graphic and it was put to the general public to design an advert for durex that would be shown on french national television to boost awareness. The effect of this enabled people who were serious about the topic to voice their opinion and change the public reaction from a personal level.

However the amount of criticism that goes with each of these examples of creative good is often matched with equal amounts of criticism, in this case exposing everyone to the dark side of something that should be met with enthusiasm and not have negative stigmas attached to it.