Mellon Educate "What The F**K Have You Done" (2016) 3:00 (UK)

International volunteer based Mellon Educate has taken a bold approach to their advertising, creating a campaign called What The Fuck Have You Done. They use an analogy of sand representing our life and how much time in grains of sand we waste doing things like sleeping, or working, or eating or whatnot. And then drives home the point that for a small teaspoonful of sand, representing your life, you can make a difference by helping build a school in Africa.

But since they know you don't care, Mellon Educate follows it up with a few more "viral," ads that break the fourth wall and attempt to shame you into volunteering-- humorously of course. Hot girl fail, dog eating corn, and unbelievable trick shot videos all come along to remind you that instead of watching dumb videos, you could be making a difference.

These ads are funny and self-aware and I applaud any NGO who tries to be irreverent instead of safe. And I guess saying “fuck” a lot is considered bold and edgy these days. However, the irony is that despite the humor, they still illustrate the problem a little too well.

A lot of people will just be skipping past this ad to get to the next ad because a lot of people aren’t interested in volunteering on this kind of scale. And humor aside, I suspect the way to reach people who want to volunteer is to reach the people who were already thinking about it to begin with. Randos on Youtube probably aren't going to be won over by it.

So beyond getting the word out and titillating “did you see the ad with the word fuck in it,” I’m a bit skeptical as to how well the ad will do.

Client: Mellon Educate
Production Company: Partizan
Director: Martin Stirling
Producers: Brett Webb, Jenny Beckett
Agency: DARE
Executive Creative Director: Brian Cooper
Copywriters: Nathan White, Jake Attree, Andrew Edelston, Matthew Weiner
Art Directors: Ben Daly, Matt Callaby, Pippa Harrigan
Producer: George Ryan