I have always felt a strong calling from the Lord to help people. I have also always felt a strong passion to go into advertising. But what took me a while to figure out, was how those two were going to fit together. Building businesses through advertising is awesome, but at the end of the day I feel called to do way more than write an iconic, award-winning ad campaign, even if it does boost sales by 200% for a start-up. And then of course, I could work for or work on projects for non-profits, but that still doesn't feel like unlocking the full potential to do good. So I was feeling a little lost because I was dead set on going into advertising, but I was feeling guilty about it.
So what did I do? I went on a search. I started digging deeper to find out who is doing more within advertising at this moment. The beginning of that journey started when I saw the recent Forbes article on Mike Smith, founder of the Bay (The Bay is an organization that is a coffeehouse, but also a skatepark, that promotes local artists-designers, painters and musicians all included, but was founded to give food and coffee to the homeless and give at-risk youth a place to go after school to be surrounded by positive people. Super awesome place that does so much, check it out here.). The article mentioned how much of a difference he was making in the world on so many different platforms, including a branding agency that creates socially conscious campaigns. My jaw dropped when I read that because I was like whoa, there's an example to the exact question that I was wanting answered. The branding agency, Unlife, has worked for companies as monstrous as Red Bull and BMW and did good, while still building huge brands. BOOM, my worlds of advertising and doing good put together.
I was feeling pretty hyped after that, like I could finally see a path of doing good in the industry. Things got even better a few weeks later when I was doing an Instagram follow spree of some of the biggest agencies and was relying heavily on the "suggested" people to follow to find out who I should add to my spree. There was an account that came up called D&AD Impact and I clicked on it to see what it was all about and was left in shock by what I had found. D&AD Impact is an awards show for world-changing ads. How cool is that? A few of the categories they give out awards in are civic engagement, community, diversity & equality, education, environmental sustainability, health & wellness, humanitarian aid and so many more (check 'em out). The candidates were mostly from huge agencies doing work for some pretty big clients. The D&AD Impact Awards are dedicated solely to awarding companies that are making socially responsible changes in the world.
Finding this was like the answer to my prayers. Here was the open door to what I had been searching for. Proof that there is advertising for good. Proof that there are huge agencies working for huge clients that are working to make huge social changes. Even more proof that I am going into a field that is the perfect fit for me.