Creatives for Bushfires: Call out for agencies to come together to provide support to Australia’s bushfire impacted communities
In the aftermath of Australia’s current bushfire crisis, countless communities across Victoria, NSW and South Australia will need the help of professional communicators, marketers, advertisers, creatives and digital platforms to help rebuild their livelihoods.
Creatives for Bushfires is currently a Facebook page where agencies and professionals can pledge their in-kind support to helping these devastated communities in their rebuild efforts when the time is right.
https://www.facebook.com/creativesforbushfires
Creatives for Bushfires is calling on agencies big and small from Australia and around the world to get involved and pledge support from skilled advertisers, communicators, writers, marketers, PR practitioners, designers, illustrators, videographers, animators, directors, photographers, community engagement practitioners, media buyers and other industry professionals.
With enough interest on the Facebook page from the creative industry, we will create a dedicated Creatives for Bushfires website where agencies can list their skills and the in-kind support they can provide Australia’s fire devastated communities in the future.
We will then provide this website to impacted communities across Australia to draw in-kind support from in future, should they wish to.
Creatives for Bushfires has been created by Melbourne-based communications agency, Upstride, whose founder and managing director Jane Metlikovec is from Gippsland.
Says Metlikovec: “At Upstride, we were thinking about what we could do to help, but we know the scale of this crisis requires much, much more than what we alone as a boutique agency can provide. The collective skills of the entire creative community can be much more effective in aiding Australia’s heartbroken communities in their rebuild efforts when the time is right.
“If you are a creative agency or experienced professional keen to donate your time and skills to helping this future effort to help get these communities back on their feet – please let us know via the Creatives for Bushfires Facebook page.
“Together we can help shattered people, businesses and communities by giving our skills – be that in chronicling their stories, crafting content, making and placing future ads, assisting with community engagement, promoting fundraising events and more.”
Image credit: AAP/Andrew Brownbill (sourced online)
8 Comments
Surely they have suffered enough already?
You know what we could do instead of crafting content or making future ads?
Actually get in there and help with the cleanup and the rebuild. You know, the physical work that will return affected places to liveable again.
Creatives – and the rest of the industry – can do so much more than try and make comms right now. As the quote in the article even says:
“be much more effective in aiding Australia’s heartbroken communities in their rebuild efforts when the time is right.”
This is not being a cynic by the way, the intention here is right. But actual work is what’s needed, not ads.
Sure, but we can’t just walk out of our offices during the week, jump in the car and go up there and find ways to help on the ground.
We have skilled professions which cost money to procure, so this is a great way to help too. It’s the best way to leverage what we can offer.
Instead of creating ads that will eventually be squeezed into Cannes, et al case studies for future awards, why not do tangible things like donate money or goods like drinking water, gloves, masks, food, hay bales on behalf of large holding groups, or local holding groups, or individual agencies? In short, all the stuff that actually makes a difference. On the ground. And quickly. Red Cross and all the other welfare agencies are taking donations in cash and in kind right now.
as per the thread above, Blazeaid runs camps at properties to help erect stock fences (for those who are handy) or just help provide cleanup services – of which a bushfire leaves a literal mountain of shit behind in its wake.
https://blazeaid.com.au/braidwood-2019/
You can bring your own tent/swag/caravan and snacks but meals, toilet, showers are provided and in some cases they will put you up in a caravan or other accomodation if you dont have it. You will be staying on family properties so you will get a first hand account of the utter destruction and impact this season’s fires have made on people’s livelihoods and homes.
Can be just a single weekend day, or stay overnight and it doesnt need weeks or months of planning – just call them the day before and you’ll be shepherded to a property the next day.
The closest one is Braidwood (only 2.5 hours south). So instead of spending a weekend in front of the PS4 or eating bacon sandwiches to recover from an booze-fuelled agency Friday night, consider dusting off that tent that has been used once since the last Peats Ridge festival and donate a day or two to the farmers who put food on your table and have lost everything.
Nice initiative, well done for doing something charitable. Support of every kind will be needed to combat a disaster of this scale.
Or the industry as a collective could somehow get a conscience and could all stop making ads that sell shit that contribute to climate change. Talk about the apple before the cart!!!
IF THERES ANY WAY MY PHOTOGRAPHY CAN BE OF USE TO ANY CAMPAIGN PLEASE DIRECTLY CONTACT ME. BIG LOVE FOR THIS COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE.