I'd like to share with you an event that took place last December in conjunction with the holidays. Called "StART's Day Out", the CSR project was co-organised by the StART Foundation, an advertising agency named Milk+Co and us, DDB PR. These three companies are owned by Foetus International.
The StART Foundation is a charity organisation founded by Foetus to provide underprivileged kids with music, art, drama, and dance classes. This time, over 80 children were brought to Milk+Co's office to go wild and paint the walls with their "happy thoughts". These rooms will then be used as Milk+Co's brainstorm rooms. Nippon was kind enough to sponsor the paint.
Milk+Co's Managing Director Neal Estavillo (right) showing the kids how to put on their special StART apron
DDB PR was in charge of media relations, and my task was to call up the media to ask if they were sending anyone to cover the event. As it wasn't a grand occassion with royalty and ministers attending, the media were naturally quite hesitant to send their reporters over. Another hurdle was that there was a Parliamentary sitting that day, and many pressmen were preoccupied with that. In the end, only ONE reporter and photographer turned up! And they were from the same newspaper! Nevertheless, we had a job to do.
Although the kids were asked to paint their "happy thoughts", they got so excited that they started painting over each others' work! The kids truly unleashed their creativity on the walls by decorating it with Christmas trees, elves, rainbows, and hearts. They even splashed the windows and each other with paint. Thankfully, the paint is water-based and can be easily removed from unwanted places. Check out these pictures.
The kids had a rainbow of colours to choose from
All the staff at Milk+Co chipped in (they are designers after all)
They got creative and didn't just use brushes
A cute elf painted by one of the children
Frauline (my colleague) and I with the StART aprons
All in all it was a successful event, judging by the smiles on the kids' faces. Even though few media turned up, our post-event release helped it get into ADOI magazine's website. You can read it here.
Cheers,
John.
