Issue #419 November 18 2016

NEW YORK, NY – SOS Children’s Villages has launched an integrated marketing effort that includes its first ever Public Service Announcement (PSA) in the United States. The PSA shines a light on the work of SOS Children’s Villages, an international organization that builds families for orphaned, abandoned, and other vulnerable children in 134 countries worldwide.

Across the world, there continues to be staggering numbers of orphaned, abandoned and other vulnerable children, with more than 151 million children having lost one or both of their parents.

Furthermore, nearly 385 million children live in extreme poverty and more than 124 million children do not go to school.

Here’s a pretty great out-of-home execution for Oliver Stone’s upcoming film Snowden, about the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden-a billboard that’s been spying on pedestrians in Toronto and streaming footage of their movements on the street.

Snowden’s revelations about the NSA, of course, raised troubling questions about mass surveillance. And the billboard-timed to the Toronto International Film Festival, where Stone’s movie premiered-itself embodies those very issues.

DentsuBos and Elevation Pictures set up surveillance cameras with motion tracking technology around Dundas Square. The cameras tracked pedestrians’ movements and livestreamed them onto a giant video board.

“It was very interesting seeing people’s reactions,” said Jon Frier, creative director at Dentsubos. “Some felt violated, some terrified, and some even praised it as the creepiest thing ever. Funnily, almost all looked around to see if there were other cameras spying on them. Which in itself is very telling.”