Adland_ Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet - James P. Othmer [118]
“Don’t you think that it’s sort of ironic,” I said, “how on one hand all of these major sponsoring corporations are hamstrung by the protests, concerned about things like brand risk and brand damage, while on the other the situation presents a rare opportunity for non-sponsoring, low-budget citizen brands to make a high-visibility value statement, for considerably less money, sometimes without even having to run an ad?”
Raj waited, then finally said, with the slightest trace of pleasure, “Yes. It does present a rare opportunity.”
For Raj, there was no dramatic epiphany. No Jerry Maguire–like moment in which he realized that despite the money and success he’d had in advertising, creating numerous award-winning campaigns at places such as Hal Riney & Partners and Chiat\Day, he didn’t want to spend the rest of the best years of his professional life making ads for things he didn’t necessarily believe in. The way he tells it, it was more of an accumulation of moments, of smaller epiphanies—for instance, a moment of soul-searching in an Orange County airport while waiting to trek out to an office park to present one more ad about one more promotion for a fast-food client—and occasionally the hollow feeling that a talented person in a position of power gets when he starts questioning the meaning of, well, everything.
Founded by Raj and the director Steve Fong, the art director Kurt Lighthouse, and the media strategist Kelly Konis, Citizen first made its mark on the world after the attacks of September 11, 2001. According to Raj, he was in a studio recording a voice-over for an industrial video with the actor Gabriel Byrne. Byrne mentioned that in an effort to help his local community heal, a group of students at his daughter’s school had gathered the night before and sung John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Byrne told Raj that there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
“Gabriel told me that he thought that the song could make a difference,” Raj explained. “I told him that it would be great for Amnesty. Next, Gabriel spoke to Jann Wenner [of Rolling Stone magazine], who spoke with Yoko [Ono]. Who gave us the rights to the song.”
Within months a film crew traveled to four continents and recorded hundreds of children singing the song. Then artists, including Jack Johnson and Willie Nelson, recorded the song for animated public service announcements. This was followed by print ads and billboards and online messages. The campaign ultimately ran in sixty-five countries and raised awareness of Amnesty International’s mission to unprecedented heights.
After the success of “Imagine,” Ono granted Amnesty rights to John Lennon’s entire solo songbook for its next effort, “Instant Karma: The Campaign to Save Darfur.” For that, more than fifty artists, including Christina Aguilera and the bands U2, Green Day, and the Black Eyed Peas, contributed tracks to the CD, which was just one media aspect of the global awareness-raising campaign. According to Raj, the CD has already earned more than $5 million. “The money from the CD will help Amnesty keep a lot of projects going, including the Citizen-created Eyes on Darfur site,” which, via high-resolution satellite imagery, allows human rights proponents around the world to literally keep an eye on a group of especially volatile and vulnerable villages in the region.
While Citizen’s work for Amnesty is impressive and admirable, the reason I had initially sought it out was its mission of “bringing together the disciplines of advocacy, entertainment, and marketing” on behalf of clients (mainstream and purely altruistic) that it had labeled “Citizen Brands.” A Citizen Brand, according to the agency’s manifesto, “aspires to be part of the solution, not just part of the problem. The people behind them recognize that we live in