Archive for the ‘Myanmar’ Category
Trying to Put a Name to a Face of Evil in Myanmar – New York Times
Posted by: clickry on: May 4, 2008
The spot is one of 30 produced for U.S. Campaign for Burma, starring celebrities like Will Ferrell and Jennifer Aniston. They will be distributed on Fanista.com, a social-networking and entertainment retail site, then passed along to sites like YouTube and Google Video every day for the next month. The goal of the campaign is to thrust the cause of human rights in Burma — now known as Myanmar — into the orbit of A-list activist causes, along with Tibet and Darfur, and to encourage international pressure on a government that activists say is one of the world’s most oppressive.
Attention will not be easy to gain, never mind actually pressuring the government. As with other global campaigns, activists must figure out how to make Americans care about a distant crisis with complex causes involving relatively unknown players. And they must also make themselves heard in the glut of worthy causes, all with a chorus of earnest celebrities crying “Urgent!”
To do so, the Burma campaign has decided to use some of the same brand-building strategies — simplified narratives, clear-cut imagery and, of course, the most carefully selected celebrities — used by other successful aid agencies, or even consumer-goods marketers.
“In a certain sense, you have to ‘brand’ it up,” said Jack Healey, the founder of the Human Rights Action Center, a partner in the Campaign for Burma. “It’s the nature of the business now.”
And no wonder. The public today is bombarded by pleas to take action on global warming, Tibet, Darfur, breast cancer, starving children, Africans with AIDS, or Katrina victims, said Daniel H. Adler, the founder of Fanista.com. The company financed much of the series of spots, called “Burma: It Can’t Wait.”
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