When we last checked, Darren Aronofsky was cashing in on Oscar buzz with Revlon. The Black Swan director teamed with Pharrell Williams for a dramatic ad starring Revlon brand embassador Jessica Biel.

Aronofsky has tweaked his focus a little for his latest ad project.

Teaming with The Meth Project, who worked with digital marketing agency Organic to create a trilogy of ads meant to combat meth abuse in Arizona, Idaho, and Colorado, the ads forego any "above the influence" suggestiveness and go for a frank, smashmouth message of what awaits meth users. Warning: the ads, which wonder "if I had asked…," might be disturbing.Continue reading...

In a time of mounting college costs and harder to find jobs for graduates, SponsorChange gives student loan credits to college grads in exchange for community and non-profit work.

Launched in April 2009 with a grant from the Sprout Funds and support from Pittsburgh Cares, founders (and brothers) Raymar and Robert Hampshire’s vision is to help foster “a world where non-profit organizations are equipped with the resources necessary to have the highest impact in their community, country and the world.”Continue reading...

David Arquette is still better known in some quarters as husband to Courteney Cox and brother to Rosanna Arquette.

But he's also chairman of Feeding America’s Entertainment Council, where his Hollywood ties have helped attract his friends for a worthy cause.

Thanks to Arquette, stars including Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Rachael Ray, Mario Batali, Josh Groban, Ben Harper and Sheryl Crow and (of course) his wife Courteney are helping with the organization's goal of feeding the one in six Americans (49.1 million, including 16.7 million children) who do not have enough to eat on a daily basis.  

The oranization, formerly known as Second Harvest, is now gearing up for its single biggest day of the year, when Help Stamp Out Hunger returns on May 8th.Continue reading...

President Obama's favorite TV network is now running promos featuring Bono, Penelope Cruz, the Jonas brothers and other celebs to promote The Lazarus Effect, HBO's upcoming AIDS documentary co-produced by the philanthro-branded non-profit (Red).

The Spike Jonze-directed special, which will debut on HBO, Channel 4 (UK) and YouTube on May 24th, promotes (Red)'s efforts fighting HIV and AIDS in Africa. That work, funded by (RED)-branded tie-ins with American Express, Apple, Gap, Starbucks and others.

Check out the spot above, and find more on (RED)'s cross-platform campaign (also on Twitter and Facebook) on its website.

Maybe it’s the pump fake that he threw at the abortion issue with his patently non-inflammatory yet life-affirming TV ad during the Super Bowl, which he filmed with hismother and which was sponsored by Focus on the Family. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s a self-declared virgin as a matter of principle, or that he has tended to take medical-missions trips during his spring breaks while college teammates hit the beaches.

But whatever it is, University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow has legions of haters out there. Lately, they’ve burned up blogs speculating about whether Tebow’s suspect throwing mechanics might drive him embarrassingly low in the upcoming National Football League draft. Fanhouse.com columnist David Whitley has even come up with a name for it: “TDS,” for “Tebow Derangement Syndrome."Continue reading...

For those of you who missed last year's promotion offering a free Disney theme park ticket on your birthday, the recent Disney "Give a Day, Get a Disney Day" promotion provided another opportunity to obtain a one-day gratis ticket to the park not only for yourself, but for friends and family willing to volunteer for a day.
 
If you never heard about it and want to join in, well, you’re too late. Just ten weeks after it’s unveiling, the Walt Disney Co. ended the promotion on Tuesday after reaching its goal of 1 million volunteers.Continue reading...

The holidays are traditionally a time of charitable giving. But this year, the economy has forced fund raisers like the Salvation Army and Sidewalk Santas to keep up with the times.

The Salvation Army is arguably the most visible non-profit brand on the street, known for its red kettles and bell-ringers who brave cold weather to collect spare change from shoppers outside retail stores. This year, though, many of those kettles will take more than cash.

The Salvation Army has placed "plastic kettles" -- kettles that accept debit and credit cards -- in 120 U.S. cities. The new kettles have wireless card readers attached to them, much like the ones you'd find at gas stations, so not having any change is no excuse.Continue reading...

One of the more familiar kinds of cause-related marketing in the US is the pink ribbon image affixed to products promising a cut of revenues to fund breast-cancer research. But faced with a pink-ribbon blitz on myriad products, Newsweek’s Claudia Kalb pictures the consumer wondering, “Should I buy this brand over that one? How much am I actually contributing to breast-cancer research? Is any of this a scam?”

The issue of how much of a cause-supporting item’s revenues actually supports that cause, not to mention (as explored in Slate last month) what percentage of a charity’s overall income is spent on administrative costs, is even more complicated when it comes to breast-cancer charities. Specifically, no two pink ribbons are necessarily equal.Continue reading...