Saturday, December 26, 2015

Zaatar w Zeit - a CSR Christmas exercise

So here's the creative premise of this campaign:
"What if the wishes you made came true?
This year we invited our customers to spread the spirit of Christmas through the power of wishes.
For every wish made, we donated a tasty wrap for the less fortunate.
And thanks to you, there was enough #Christmas4everyone."
So far, very good. Zaatar w Zeit engaged in a CSR campaign to help the needy via wishes for its more well to do customers. The result was this Publicis film shown above.
The pros are obvious: Spreading cheer to people willing to go on camera and be thankful for it. Zaatar w Zeit customers making a change (even if indirectly). Lots of emotions going round right on time for the highest emotionally charged period of the year. What's there not to love?
OK maybe a couple of things: I do realize this is advertising (I work in it!), and that campaigns should feature "people" (real or actors) but in such cases it always bothers me to see less-well to do people a bit exploited for the camera (major note: does the production company or whomever signed the film - or even Publicis have signed release papers for these people appearing in the ad?), also, whereas CSR should help the surrounding community, and it rests on making itself known to the public, I wonder if more efficient work could have been done without the media fanfare.
Still, as not to appear ungrateful for the work (conceptual and executional) that came with the ad, here's a thumb up for Zaatar w Zeit and Publicis for actually thinking of the needy people (the movie will show you they are not exclusively Lebanese!) around us which, even if we watch them, we do not tend to see them.