UNICEF SNUBS TOP CREATIVE AGENCIES FOR LAUNCH OF THE TAP PROJECT IN AUSTRALIA
Droga5’s international life-saving phenomenon, The Tap Project, is spilling to Australian shores but incredibly Droga5 and a specially selected collective of top agencies in Australia formed earlier this year, will not be invited to participate in the Australian rollout.
Droga5 wanted to work in partnership with agencies they respected to roll out Tap Project here. Earlier this year, Droga5, with help from CB, connected with the best agencies in each state and New Zealand – to ask them do just that – in exactly the same way that David Droga invited Crispin Porter and Goodby Silverstein to participate in the U .S. rollout. Australian shops willingly saying yes were Clemenger BBDO (Melbourne), Marketforce (Perth), Junior (Brisbane) and Clemenger BBDO (Adelaide), who all agreed to work with Droga5 (Sydney). In addition, Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand agreed to cover the NZ market.
Instead, UNICEF in Australia will not follow the lead of their counterparts inthe U.S. and is asking that prospective agencies officiallytender for the pro-bonoproject. The successful agencies – advertising, public relations,media and events – will be chosen by an industrycommittee that was formed earlier this year to launch the Tap Projectin Australiain March 2009. However, the closing date for submissions is extremely tight – December 24, 2008 – just over three weeks away.
Rather than Droga5 – an agency with two years’ experience of pushing out Tap nationally across the US taking the central role of co-ordinating the Australian rollout, UNICEF Australia selected its own ‘expert’ committee. They alone will select the ideas from companies who choose to pitch (although given the extremely tight deadline, they’ll have little time to create their own Titanium efforts).
The selection panel for the Tap Project is made up of: Alison Overton -Marketing & Fundraising Director & Deputy CEO, UNICEFAustralia; Colin Wilson Brown – The Clinic; Neil Shoebridge – Editor,Marketing & Media, The Australian Financial Review; John Clark – exChairman of ADMA; Rochelle Burberry, Managing Partner, Access PublicRelation; and Michael Gencher – General Manager, Podium ESP.
The Tap Project is Droga5’s award-winning fundraising campaign for UNICEF which launched in New York City on World Water Day in 2007 (March 22). Hundreds of restaurants across New York invited customers to donate $1 for the tap water they would normally get for free.
The funds help UNICEF save lives by providing safe drinking water to children in developing nations. In just one day, New Yorkers generated years’ worth of clean drinking water to the world’s children most in need. UNICEF declared The Tap Project as its most successful single initiative in the organisation’s history.
The successful campaign spread across North America and Canada in 2008 and on World Water Day 2009 it will spill across continents and make its global debut in many countries, including Australia (ironically the only country without Droga’s involvement). The Tap Project’s Australian creator, David Droga, won the Titanium Lion for creative innovation at the 2007 Cannes International Advertising Festival for the concept.
For a full description of the project and details of how to get involved, visit the ‘Get Involved’ section of the UNICEF Australia website: www.unicef.org.au. The closing date for submissions is December 24, 2008.
UNICEF and Water
Water is a daily privilege that millions take for granted. The little known truth is that lack of clean and accessible drinking water is the second largest worldwide killer of children under five. Currently, UNICEF provides access to safe water and sanitation facilities while promoting safe hygiene practices in more than 90 countries. By 2015, UNICEF’s goal is to reduce the number of people without safe water and basic sanitation by 50 percent.
65 Comments
what a pack of wankers.
unicef – pull your collective heads in.
pitching a pro-bono??
deadline xmas eve??
all the best, idiots.
politics at its best. love it.
Will the tap project be discussing with the PM why he’s so keen on the north south pipeline? I’m sure the guys in Goulburn would like a lil water too.
…although given the extremely tight deadline, they’ll have little time to create their own Titanium efforts…
this quote says everything about the ad industry. no wonder, the clients would rather do the shit themselves.
the buggers!
shame for droga5.
but i suppose once you sell an idea to a client, it belongs to them.
trust australia to make a brilliant idea start to sound like a lot of hard work
Wow. Here we are in a small market at the other end of the earth and the local UNICEF tools want to feel important and all ‘businessy’. Not busy enough to just say “thanks for the brilliant idea and putting together a rollout solution for us”? If this was the corporate world, especially right now, everyone on the local unicef board would be at centrelink by Monday. Opportunity for the worst pun ever: I guess you can lead a horse to water….
I can’t believe UNICEF would try on something like this.
It worked so well in NY, why wouldn’t they use the same model which worked so well before?
Utterly stupid. They will get nowhere!
OK, so there’s two ways of looking at this:
ONE
UNICEF are being almost criminally stupid here. They already had a raft of top agencies agreeing to work for them for free, and they really shouldn’t have pissed on them by taking their pro-bono project to an open tender. That’s bad form. And quite disrespectful to Droga5, who devoted countless hours to creating and bringing this project to life.
TWO
Why shouldn’t UNICEF do this? The fact is, the Tap Project is now their property thanks to Droga, and given that Droga5 has already profited handsomely (Cannes Titanium is a great way to build an agency profile), you could make a fair argument that Droga5’s vested interest isn’t in the project’s success per se, but in the continuation of Droga5’s involvement with this lighthouse brand.
The truth, no doubt, is somewhere in the middle. But I can tell you that we won’t be pitching for this, because (a) it’s pro bono and (b) even if we won, it’d be hard for us to trade off the success of anything we did on the brand, because the original idea is obviously always going to be credited to Droga5.
Tim, surely the only thing that matters is how to best help the poor children of the world?
“…the poor kids of the world” would probably want Droga5 controlling this project looking at how much of a success it was when they were doing it.
Seems like the original idea to get agency’s on board is better than what UNICEF is proposing.
I can’t see one heavy weight creative on the selection panel…
9.58
“surely the only thing that matters is how to best help the poor children of the world?”
Funny – you would’ve thought that was what mattered most to the local unicef client too.
Ironically, their internal politics and self-interest will mean most of the ideas presented to them will die in their infancy.
“(b) even if we won, it’d be hard for us to trade off the success of anything we did on the brand, because the original idea is obviously always going to be credited to Droga5.”
Tap is a project / product in it’s own right, the way you advertise products is what we are awarded for. PS3, Yellow Pages, Tap, they’re all products. So do your small space press win a Caxton, do your viral and win a Cannes.
All that said, you still have a point to a degree.
Looks like the glass is half empty.
This article and the ensuing comments neatly encapsulate all that is ugly, unpleasant and unltimately self-defeating about our creative community.
Rather than aspire to go to Cannes, spend some time in Africa or Latin America and see for yourself what living without drinking water actually looks like.
You might then like to help solve the problem, rather than as Tim so eloquently put it, attempt to ‘trade off it’.
UNICEF have done more for the world’s poor kids than any other organisation. They are probably not perfect but they know better than anyone else what they are doing.
Better even than people who work in advertising agencies.
They are neither ‘criminally stupid’ nor a ‘pack of wankers’.
Look past the end of your own desk, people.
Anybody thought that maybe Droga5 had declined to participate, or had refused to work with Unicef Australia.
There could possibly some misinformed comments on here.
Let’s not forget the reason for running the Tap project – 1.8 million children die every year as a result of not having access to clean drinking water.
UNICEF Australia doesn’t want to poor cold water on Droga5’s involvement in TAP. We think it’s a fabulous campaign and we were excited for it to roll out here in Australia. UNICEF Australia approached David Nobay at Droga5 at the end of 2007. At that time Droga5 declined to work with UNICEF Australia in the Australian market on the TAP project. UNICEF Australia was not consulted about Droga5’s convening of creative agencies to undertake this project for UNICEF and was surprised to hear of this. UNICEF Australia would have loved for Droga5 to be involved or to even run TAP in Australia but they declined involvement at the end of 2007.
As such UNICEF Australia convened an advisory group and panel to call for expressions of interest from agencies to participate in TAP in Australia. The purpose of the panel is to ensure the most collaborative inclusive program in Australia. It is not a creative pitch. The UNICEF Australia team has discussed the project and the panel process with Dave Droga and has met with Droga5 in Australia.
TAP is already running In New Zealand. The TAP campaign launched in NZ in 2007 with DRAFT FCB managing creative and rollout. UNICEF New Zealand has not been approached by Droga5 either.
The campaign is terrific, innovative and will raise much needed funds for the world’s poorest children. At the end of the day that’s the most important thing.
If any agencies would like to discuss this with us please contact me on (02) 9261 2811.
Carolyn Hardy
Chief Executive
UNICEF Australia
Good luck to those pitching for it… we sure as hell won’t be.
Just when you thought that clients couldn’t be any more stupid, inward looking and myopic, there comes a client, pro-bono at that, that beats the rest of the pack in stupidity, insensitivity, lack of vision and ultimately lack of grace. Tap Project is a ‘product’ because Droga5 made it into a product, and this product solved the brief, stupendously. On top of all that, well, they did it for free. Pro-bono. And yes, they reaped what they sew, Titanium et all. For Unicef to grab an idea, in this case a ‘product’ created, developed and brought to life by Droga5, and give the brief to a different non-related agency to execute in Australia is disrespectful, insulting and dumb. Any agency that pitches for this project is doomed to be stepping in some heavy titanium shoes and runs the risk of being ridiculed by their peers in the industry and also being seen as desperately opportunistic. In fact, any agency worth their salt shouldn’t be pitching for this project, children or no children involved. It smacks of nasty politics and it carries the wiff of an ungrateful and over-ambitious pro-bono client trying way too hard to leave their mark on an idea that is not theirs to keep or to give away on the first place. I’m actually surprised that Droga doesn’t hold the copyright to the idea or to the name of the initiative itself, as it seems to be the case nowadays on ‘new’ agencies. Big Mistake.
Why change a formula that worked so well? I hope it doesn’t get tweaked and tweaked and tweaked before turning into another boring, unappealing charity campaign.
I feel a boycott coming on.
what a slap in the face. sounds like someone at unicef is power hungry and wants to put their own stamp on the campaign. if they wanted the best for the cause they would roll with what is tried, tested and successful!
Careful Campbell, you’re scratching at a very nasty little sore right there.
Advertising agencies don’t want to save the world when they do pro-bono work. They want to do great work… win awards for that great work… and profit from said work, both financially and for personal gratification.
The only real exception is when an agency principle or team has a genuine personal interest in the cause. Then they care about whether it works or not.
Otherwise, it’s all about playing the fame game. Earth Hour is, in many respects, the ultimate pro-bono campaign for agency people. It doesn’t really achieve anything of substance, but it generates so much positive spin, some of it is bound to rub off onto you.
The Tap Project is/was a brilliant idea, and one of the few that actually works just as hard for the client as it does for the agency. For that, Droga5 should be congratulated.
But it doesn’t change the fact that, by and large, we’re a bunch of self-serving arseholes who’d do just about anything for peer recognition. Including making work for a charity that’s really designed to promote our own careers.
Sorry.
Very disrespectful to Droga5.
Sounds to me like Droga5 NY and Droga5 Sydney aren’t talking to each other. Why would Droga5 Sydney convene a group of agencies without at least the courtesy of informing the client ?
UNICEF say they’d have loved Droga5 to work on this campaign but that Dave Nobay declined to meet with them and didn’t tell them he was convening a group of agencies to work on TAP in Australia?
Also, seems that TAP is already running in NZ under Draft FCB? They did a good job of it why would Droga5 seek to have Saatchi take it over from Draft?
Soooo if i’m not mistaken it has already been picked up in NZ for the launch in 08… talk about deja vu… What’s the big deal? Unicef US has full control and veto over it.
STOP.
GRAMMAR TIME!
pour not poor.
didn’t read after that…
How nice people can hide behind a veil of anonymity…
The work Droga5 did for the original Tap project suited both the client and the agency. It won awards for the agency, and it shifted units for the client.
Lightning doesn’t strike twice, however, and Droga5 was probably wise to decline involvement this time round.
Whichever agency takes this job on will find it a poisoned chalice in terms of industry reputation. The Australian work will be forever compared to the original Droga5 work, and will likely fall short.
But in the ‘real world’ – the one unconnected to alpha males wearing suits and trainers, and strangely orange women in little black dresses at AWARD night – taking on this job does have some societal merit.
“STOP.
GRAMMAR TIME!
pour not poor.
didn’t read after that…”
I think you’ll find it was a spelling, not grammatical, error but whatever…
‘shifted units for the client’ ?! They’re talking about providing safe drinking water to kids!
I give up. Enough. Good luck to unicef.
I think there are some crossed wires here. UNICEF have made a statement so someone call one of the Davids for their side of the story and this can be put to rest. Of course if Unicef have snubbed D5 then shame on them but they say they haven’t. Give them the benefit of the doubt. They actually do some good for the world unlike our industry who flog crap that people don’t need.
You people are seriously deluded. This is pro bono, if you don’t want to work on it fine (like someones’ asking you right?) The only guy I know who really does pro bono is Trevor Fearnley from Ad Partners. Sure they’re not the cool agency (they don’t have a number in their name!!!) but a great 1 hour doco plus audience Q&A in prime time on the ABC was fantastic. And you idiots think you know about altenative channels. Fuck Off.
‘An idea that’s not theirs?’
‘Disrespectful to Droga 5?’
1:27 (the longer version) Bitter, twisted and disgraceful…
‘Children or no children’
That about sums you up…
I smell bullshit.
Get all hot and bothered if you like, but I reckon the whole thing is bunkum.
Great way to get your attention though.
Using New York City tap water to help dying kids……David Letterman will have a field day with this.
I have a friend in new york that never saw this campaign. And he goes out everywhere. Every restaurant.
Unicef is an organisation that deserves more respect than many of these comments reflect.
The true power of the Tap Project is that it’s a pure, organic idea designed to live long beyond the reach of any particular agency, office or network.
Regardless of the process, Droga5 Australia has pledged to help and support the Tap Project here in any way we practically can. Let’s focus our energy and creativity in the right place. It’s an amazing cause and deserves more.
As has been pointed out by the Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, if just a fraction of the money being wasted on climate change (and he shows clearly that it is being wasted) was directed at providing water purification technology and chemicals to the third world, millions upon millions of lives would be saved RIGHT NOW, and not in some mythical overheated future earth.
Quoting Bjorn Lomborg isn’t so great
the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty ruled that his book was scientifically dishonest.
the creative (as in advertising not the real creative) community is stupid and nasty. its bizaar reading the comments on this post.
7.29, I hate to be cynical, but if there were “millions upon millions” more people on this Earth, it would merely exacerbate half of these problems. Overpopulation is the root cause for most of these issues.
Congratulations Australian creatives!! What a bunch of hysterical, screaming fuckwits. I can’t believe some of the comments that are written here.
It’s clear from two of the responses above that UNICEF has no problem. Droga has no problem. The only people bitching and moaning are the sad morons that are not related to either of the affected parties. Give me a break!
Seems a lot of people in a lot of agencies don’t have much work on. Esp if they’ve got the time to get so hot and bothered about a problem that doesn’t seem to exist and has nothing to do with them anyway. Idiots. Who do you work for?
Love it that the most vitriolic, bitter and twisted comments here are anonymous.
Pathetic, sad, idiots.
Agreed 5:43, we embarrass ourselves regularly. There’s a lot of ugly, cynical thinking in our industry. The fact that we’re bitching about why we should or shouldn’t help UNICEF save kids for this or that reason is moronic. No wonder everyone outside of advertising thinks we’re a pack of amoral, self-serving cunts. And 1:27 (Droga5 sycophant), you’re one of the worst.
Nobby’s comment at 6:38 summed it up. UNICEF deserve more respect than we’re showing them, and we should all be happy to help where we can. We’re talking about a basic human need for drinking water, not awards or status.
Good God, is this blog going to stop now?!
I think I note a positive outcome… at least it’s forced David Nobay to make a statement, and it’s a good one. Yay.
Do some research, 9.46, and you’ll find that commission has been totally ridiculed for this and many other decisions. It’s not what you’d call a genuinely unbiased tribunal but a group-think panel that made a mockery of science and common sense.
But all that aside, there is no doubting that even a tiny amount of money spent on water purification in the 3rd world – in the mere hundreds of millions rather than the the trillions being wasted on climate change that hasn’t happened for a decade – would save many millions of lives.
And that’s the point, isn’t?
An email from Nigel Dawson, CD, Grey, Melbourne:
I just read your report on the UNICEF Tap Projection the CB website. Rather than write on the blog I thought I should put the following story into a note that may well interest your esteemed readers.
It shows that what UNICEF say and what UNICEF do can be two very different things.
Last June I went to Cambodia for three days with our pro bono client ChildWise. The purpose was to investigate the problem of child-sex tourism to assist our work in the future.
It was a very sobering trip.
On the first day we visited An Dong village, actually a slum some 20 kilometres out of Phnom Penh. Some 8,000 people were dumped there a couple of years back, with no shelter, no food, no water, nothing, having been forcibly cleared out overnight from their homes in the inner city by the police and bulldozers. Developers wanted the land and the government acceded.
It is a desperate sight. 12 year olds look like 6 year olds. There is malnutrition, dengue fever, malaria and mounds of rotting garbage. We met a young mum who couldn’t eat because of a huge septic hole in her gum. She was fading away. Another young woman of 22, whole looked 52, was in the final stages of HIV /AIDS.
Amidst all this we were shown some bright blue water tanks.
UNICEF had been alerted to the problem and proudly came and installed them and filled them with fresh drinking water. It held some of the water-born diseases at bay.
But of course one day the water ran out. UNICEF were asked to refill them. It didn’t happen and instead the tanks were filled with heavily polluted water from nearby.
So what did UNICEF do? They turned up one day and scrubbed the UNICEF name from the side of their tanks. You can see the feint outline on the enclosed photo.
Now the people have e-coli and other diseases to add to their woes.
So, when you hear about UNICEF saving lives by providing safe drinking water to children in developing nations, be sceptical.
N
Christ, Nigel, it’s uncanny. I had the very same experience.
I went out to lunch last week, and having been shown a bottle of Grange ’85, what came back in the decanter was clearly not that, maybe Yellowtail or the like.
It was like ‘they had scrubbed off the label’.
Amazing, the same sort of behaviour in two different countries. i am now a true sceptic. Has anybody else suffered this problem? Was UNICEF in some way responsible?
8.20pm That’s hysterical.
Nigel,
I’m not following the point of your letter as I find it very leading, negative and unhelpful to a massive world problem.
I mean, UNICEF went to all the trouble of installing the water tanks, surely not for a branding opportunity in a slum as you say?
Did UNICEF scrub off the logo? Or did it fade?
Why were Unicef unable to re-fill the water tanks?
Were they just pure lazy and didn’t care or did they not have enough MONEY?
I hope that you can back up your allegations with a little more substance other than a two week trip and some tourist photo’s.
Don’t you love it. Nigel Dawson hijacks this to promote his own client. Only in advertising …
Disappointing to read Nigel Dawson’s comment. I’ve forwarded it to UNICEF Cambodia for investigation and comment.
This is not how UNICEF operates. UNICEF has very effective programs all over the world which have effective outcomes and we’re very proud of that work.
If anyone would like to discuss this further please contact me directly.
Carolyn Hardy
Chief Executive
UNICEF Australia.
“STOP.
GRAMMAR TIME!
pour not poor.
didn’t read after that…”
Regardless of whether it’s grammar or spelling I think the M C Hammer gag amongst all this serious stuff deserves recognition.
A sad truth. But anything associated with the UN is going to be corrupt and incompetent. Yes, there are many people there trying to do the right thing, but for most, the right thing is whatever their corrupt government want. Think of Russia and China vetoing action on Burma, Zimbabwe and Dafur. If you think UINICEF is going to be any different, you’re being very optimistic.
Does anyone else agree there is a real problem with a blog posting anonymous comments, especially on such an important issue? I mean, really, anyone can write anything, without being accountable! Let’s see if this one’s posted…
‘Anonymous’
I’ve seen what you guys do in Africa. I’ve watched many of your ads. I’m just wondering when you are going to do the ‘feed a junior’ campaign.
Most of us don’t get paid anything. We work 16 hours a day. If we do get paid, it’s generally around the $20,000 mark. For even a 12 hour day, that equates to $3.61 per hour, before tax. I know the rest of the world live on less than a dollar a day. But at least they can feed themselves.
We laugh and pretend we really enjoy our jobs. And we kind of do. But you’ve seen the sort of dicks we have to work with if you’ve read the blog.
So if you want to align themselves with advertising, please, FEED THE JUNIORS.
Thanks,
Placement Guy.
Jesus Christ! you are a sad bunch of losers – get a life!
This is why advertising in Australia is second rate. Creatives here are a bunch of hacks sitting at their desks writing bitter, angry emails anonymously. Pseudo intellectual, supposedly anti-establishment and generally anti client. The word that comes to mind is “tool’ not ‘creative’. Do some decent work that you’d be proud of rather than engaging in slagging off a charity.
Loving FEED THE JUNIORS campaign. Well done Placement Guy.
The thing is Phil, it’s a big issue.
And UNICEF isn’t just a charity, it’s a powerful arm of the UN, one of the few parts of that organisation that actually does any good. But as a part of the UN, it is inevitably politicised – and thus capable also of doing much that is bad.
Though, of course, an ad blog is hardly the place to debate that issue.
Most ad people can’t even talk intelligently about ads, so we’re hardly going to hear too much sensible in here about world issues.
I just object to your attitude that seems to suggest UNICEF – and all charities – are above scrutiny. They’re not and never should be.
Just a question….who came up with the idea of Tap Water Day? I think it was UNICEF themselves. Droga5 have brilliantly brought it to life but I don’t think they claim to have had the original thought. In which case, it seems perfectly reasonable for UNICEF to roll it out as they please.
Thank you Nigel Dawson for being the first to say the emperors have no clothes! Words and actions are two different things. Too many people commenting on UNICEF’s savvy wording for PR and not enough monitoring actions, or lack thereof.
The following link is to a movie about the same community Dawson was describing. I’ve been there too and wondered where the hell UNICEF as children are sick and dying. And yes, why has the UNICEF name been scratched off the tanks?
http://www.licadhocanada.blip.tv/#1093493