“The Drinkable Book” educates readers and literally helps them create clean, safe, drinkable water
While the power of advertising has been chronicled in myriad ways and reflected in innumerable campaigns, DDB New York has added a fresh, new, groundbreaking product development and creation chapter to the industry book of achievements, teaming with WATERisLife to launch “The Drinkable Book,” a manual that teaches safe water tips and serves as a tool that literally kills deadly waterborne diseases, providing the reader with the means to create clean, drinkable water with each page.
“The Drinkable Book” features a brand new type of paper invented by McGill University & University of Virginia chemist, Dr. Theresa Dankovich, and works like a scientific coffee filter. Each page of the book is coated with silver nanoparticles, which kill diseases like cholera, E. coli and typhoid.
The book itself works in three easy steps. Simply tear along the perforation. Slide the filter into the 3D printed case (i.e., the book’s packaging). Pour the contaminated water through and the result is drinkable water. After passing water through the filter, there is a reduction of greater than 99.99 percent in bacteria count, which is comparable to tap water in the United States. Each book contains 24 usable pages, each of which contains two filters which each last 30 days. In total, the book can provide a single person with clean water for up to four years.
“The Drinkable Book,” said Matt Eastwood, chief creative officer of DDB New York, “will revolutionize water purification. It costs only pennies to produce, making it by far the cheapest option on the market.
The potential of this product development breakthrough is far reaching. A staggering 3.4 million people die each year from a water related disease and, in most of the cases, the victims didn’t know the water was unsafe to drink in the first place. Therefore, “The Drinkable Book” isn’t just a tool that purifies water, it teaches proper sanitation, too. The content on each page, printed in food grade ink in both English and Swahili, educates people about safe water habits–providing life saving information, such as keeping trash and feces away from your water source.
WATERisLIFE will be distributing “The Drinkable Book” to villages in need as part of an integrated water, sanitation and hygiene program to save lives and transform communities. The video below serves as an introduction to “The Drinkable Book.”
Since 2011, DDB New York and WATERisLIFE have worked together to raise awareness of the global water crisis and raise donations to help build clean water solutions in the world’s poorest communities. Recently, the agency launched The Girl Who Can’t Cry, an online film that documents the many hardships faced by a young girl in the slums of India, revealing the fact that she can’t cry due to dehydration. Earlier, DDB NY turned out the online film Kenya Bucket List, which shows the experiences of a four-year-old Maasai boy in order to create awareness that one in five children don’t reach their fifth birthday, as a result of unsafe drinking water in sub-Saharan Africa.
SCHROM x Yacht Club and Be Electric Studios Launch Electric XR for Virtual Production
SCHROM x Yacht Club, a full-service live-action, tabletop, and postproduction company, has teamed with Be Electric Studios, a soundstage, equipment rental, and virtual production company, to launch Electric XR, a virtual production collective.
Industry veteran Thomas Rossano will lead the new venture, which provides advanced virtual production solutions across multiple facilities. He brings over 25 years of experience in live-action, tabletop, postproduction and talent curation to enhance Electric XR’s offerings as a resource for brands and agencies, as well as other production companies in need of virtual production solutions. Additionally Rossano continues to serve as EP at XR New York (XR-NY), a role he’s held since December 2022. SCHROM x Yacht Club originally established XR-NY to help provide XR services for third-party rentals. While XR-NY will continue to function independently for SCHROM X Yacht Club, it now operates under the Electric XR umbrella.
Rossano’s expertise spans producing live-action commercials, branded content, interactive and experiential content. In addition to leading Electric XR, he holds responsibilities at SCHROM x Yacht Club which include driving business development, collaborating with sales reps and expanding the company’s creative talent network. Rossano’s career includes serving as an exec producer at Hungry Man for about 11 years, right from that company’s inception. He then went on to become a partner at Station Film where he also had a lengthy tenure. Later he was a partner at PRISM. Then after the pandemic hit, he became a freelance EP for nearly two years, looking into opportunities in virtual production, which led him to XR NY and now Electric XR. Over the years, he has produced high-profile... Read More