Great work starts with the client. And that is the case with the Save Darfur Coalition’s “Portfolio,” a public service TV spot directed by Jake Scott of RSA for Greer Margolis Mitchell & Burns (GMMB), an ad agency/media firm specializing in major social issues and political campaigns.
“Portfolio” is featured in this week’s “The Best Work You May Never See” gallery. The spot shows an investment broker telling his clients, a married couple, how great their investment portfolio is performing, particularly in the energy and technology sectors. The broker relates, “You took a bit of a hit in real estate but more than made up for it in genocide.” The couple is taken aback by this revelation and the spot ends with the disturbing question, “Is your mutual fund funding genocide?”
Dave Tobey, GMMB creative director, explains that the client was key to making this PSA a reality. “I remember one of my earliest meetings with this client and they told me that their mission was to put themselves out of business,” related Tobey. “That’s not traditionally what you’re looking for in an agency client but in this case it is truly what we all want. That immediately told me that their mission statement isn’t just a piece of paper. They are committed to this work and to ending this genocide in Darfur. To that end, the client is willing to push any appropriate button, pull any lever, talk to any appropriate audience to try to affect change.”
The initial thrust was to raise public awareness of the genocide. Today, said Tobey, the majority of Americans have a sense of what’s going on in Darfur. So the agency and client shifted their strategy to help encourage divestment in order to help shut off funding for the atrocities in Darfur.
Back in April, GMMB introduced a campaign targeting Fidelity Investments–not just to raise awareness about divestment, said Tobey, but to publicly shame Fidelity, which the Save Darfur Coalition had approached to explain to them the need to divest. Fidelity refused so GMMB created a campaign spanning TV, print and mobile billboards, primarily in Boston where Fidelity is headquartered.
In its TV commercial, GMMB had a Darfur refugee read a letter in which Fidelity, said Tobey, “rather coldly explained” its position. Fidelity then mounted an effort to keep the spot from airing and was fairly successful in that regard. Media outlets that originally agreed to run the ad ultimately didn’t. Still, GMMB was able to gain airtime on a few local TV stations.
Now “Portfolio” continues the divestiture strategy but with a slightly different wrinkle, directly targeting average investors. The spot marked the first time that GMMB had written a dialogue script and used actors in a commercial for the Save Darfur Coalition. Prior to that, the strategic approach was to tell the story through the minds and hearts of real people, primarily refugees. The agency and client didn’t feel it necessary or appropriate to script something and have actors perform when the actual reality of the situation is what needs to be conveyed.
But ultimately “Portfolio” was so simple, direct and true to the cause that GMMB and the client decided to commit to it. “Making this departure was somewhat of a risk,” observes Tobey. “But the people at the Save Darfur Coalition are not risk averse if they feel this will help affect change, and that’s a most admirable quality in a client.”
House Calls Via TV and Streamers: A Rundown of The Season’s Doctor Dramas
No matter your ailment, there are plenty of TV doctors waiting to treat you right now on a selection of channels and streamers.
Whether it's Noah Wyle putting on his stethoscope for the first time since "ER," Morris Chestnut graduating to head doctor, Molly Parker making her debut in scrubs or Joshua Jackson trading death for life on a luxury cruise, new American hospital dramas have something for everyone.
There's also an outsider trying to make a difference in "Berlin ER," as Haley Louise Jones plays the new boss of a struggling German hospital's emergency department. The show's doors slide open to patients Wednesday on Apple TV+.
These shows all contain the DNA of classic hospital dramas โ and this guide will help you get the TV treatment you need.
"Berlin ER"
Dr. Suzanna "Zanna" Parker has been sent to run the Krank, which is only just being held together by hardened โ and authority-resistant โ medical staff and supplies from a sex shop. The result is an unflinching drama set in an underfunded, underappreciated and understaffed emergency department, where the staff is as traumatized as the patients, but hide it much better.
From former real-life ER doc Samuel Jefferson and also starring Slavko Popadiฤ, ลafak ลengรผl, Aram Tafreshian and Samirah Breuer, the German-language show is not for the faint of heart.
Jones says she eventually got used to the blood and gore on the set.
"It's gruesome in the beginning, highly unnerving. And then at some point, it's just the most normal thing in the world," she explains. "That's flesh. That's the rest of someone's leg, you know, let's just move on and have coffee or whatever."
As it's set in the German clubbing capital, the whole city... Read More