Public service advertising is where creative work has to earn its effectiveness the hardest way - by changing actual behaviour, not just brand perception. The campaigns in this collection have done that. Dumb Ways to Die for Metro Trains Melbourne reduced accidents by 21% while becoming one of the most awarded campaigns in history. This Girl Can increased female participation in sport. The seatbelt, drink-drive, and anti-smoking campaigns that changed British road and health statistics over decades. These are campaigns measured in lives, not clicks.
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Before The First Cigarette
- World Health Organization
Smoking does not begin with a cigarette, it begins with imitation. The series shows children copying the gestures of smokers using ordinary objects, which moves prevention back to where the behaviour actually starts, years before anyone lights anything.
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My Own
- Yokohama City Special Support School for the Visually Impaired · FRONTAGE Inc., Tokyo, Japan
What distinguishes this school is that it adapts to the exact gradation of each student's visual impairment, remaking teaching materials and lesson plans person by person. With diversity and inclusion worn smooth as words, the campaign shows the meticulous individual adaptations behind them, so the
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Violence against women leaves traces
- Aurora Saúde · ORO Comunicação
Every March, health insurers run Women's Month work about strength, self-care and wellbeing. The one subject absent is violence against women, even though its consequences arrive in clinics daily as anxiety, depression, panic attacks, insomnia, chronic pain and medication dependence. Aurora Saude pu
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Wars
- Amnistia Internacional · Wild Fi Santiago, Chile · 2026
The campaign leans on the double meaning of the word. On one side are the armed conflicts where children and adolescents are forcibly recruited; on the other are the wars of an actual childhood, pillow fights, tickle fights, water battles. Setting them in the same frame is what makes the real one le
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Because Eww.
- Purell
A hand sanitiser campaign that skips the hygiene lecture and works purely on the flinch. It dwells on the specific things that are genuinely revolting to touch, letting disgust do the persuading rather than any claim about germs killed.
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Before It's Gone
- Independent Health Foundation
An out-of-home campaign that renders the African continent as cracked, dried earth populated by silhouettes of people, cattle and wildlife, with water rising around its edges. The land is legible as a map and as a loss at the same time, so climate damage is shown as territory disappearing rather tha
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Cutting Corners
- WHO
Everyone has cut the mouldy part off a piece of food and eaten the rest. The WHO uses that shared domestic habit for World Food Safety Day, pointing out that once mould is visible the bacteria and toxins have already spread through what is left. Cutting corners becomes the literal action and the war
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Newspapers For Suya
- Power Oil · This&That Creative Agency
In Nigeria a newspaper does not retire when it has been read. It goes to the suya spot and is spread across a table to serve grilled meat, a national ritual so ordinary it has stopped being noticed. For Power Oil's Sallah campaign the work simply took the medium seriously: if the paper was going to
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Food for Families
- Raley’s · Little Moving Pictures · 2019
Raley's "Food for Families". A grocery spot framing community food donation and giving back.
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We Believe
- Great Ormond St Hospital
Great Ormond Street Hospital "We Believe". A charity appeal rallying belief and support behind the children's hospital.
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Open Homes
- Airbnb
Open Homes turns the Airbnb network itself into disaster relief. The programme began organically after Hurricane Sandy in 2012, when hosts started offering rooms free to people who had been evacuated, and Airbnb built it into a permanent global response: hosts list their space at no charge to evacue
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Sign Away Cancer
- Oracle Cancer Trust · 2024
Oracle Cancer Trust "Sign Away Cancer". A charity spot rallying support to fund cancer research.
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Your Brain is Precious
- Brain Foundation · 2022
"Your Brain Is Precious" for the Brain Foundation: a woman haloed by radiant light makes the mind literally glow - a health-awareness plea to value and protect brain health.
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The Savings Method
- NVE · 2023
NVE "The Savings Method". A spot framing a smart, disciplined method for saving money.
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We've Tried €verything
- Wallonie Securite routiere · Air Brussels · 2022
Wallonie Securite Routiere "We've Tried Everything". A road-safety spot making an urgent appeal for safer driving.
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Hospital
- Ayadi El Mostakbal · 2019
A charity film for Ayadi El Mostakbal supporting a hospital: the outstretched hand in a golden field embodies hope and help - an invitation to reach back and give.
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The Future Starts Small
- SFND
SFND "The Future Starts Small". A spot framing big futures beginning with small first steps.
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50th Anniversary
- Save the Children · 2023
Save the Children "50th Anniversary". A charity anniversary spot marking 50 years of its work.
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End the excuses
- Daman · FP7 McCann Dubai · 2018
Daman, the UAE health insurer, built End the Excuses around the gap between knowing you should get insured and finding a reason to put it off. The insight: health insurance procrastination isn't about affordability, it's about the excuses people tell themselves to avoid an uncomfortable decision, so
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Laws under attack
- ICRC · TBWA\RAAD · 2024
After a targeted attack destroyed the last hospital in south Lebanon, the ICRC inscribes articles of the Geneva Convention onto the ruined building's own shattered walls, calligraphy by Lebanese muralist Ghaleb Hawila. The insight: the most damning place to display a violated law is on the wreckage
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Inkvisible
- UN Women · Impact BBDO · 2024
Henna means happy marriage - so to expose the fact that one in three married women in Pakistan is abused, the bruises were drawn in henna: a black eye, fingers around a throat, in the medium of celebration. Worn by parliamentarians in government sessions, it helped drive a new bill increasing protec
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Feminine Arabic
- Twitter · VML Dubai · 2021
Arabic grammar can address women as women, yet modern usage defaults to the masculine - so women are rarely addressed as themselves. Twitter used 140 characters to spark the shift, championing the feminine form in everyday digital conversation. The insight: inclusion in the Middle East starts inside
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Donate to View
- Childhope · BBDO Guerrero · 2015
Childhope Philippines, OPM icon Ely Buendia and BBDO Guerrero launched 'Donate to View' at Christmas: an animated film built on Buendia's song 'Bulaklak sa Buwan', unlockable only by donation - every view a contribution to street children's protection and education programmes. The insight: invert th
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The Mirror
- UNAIDS · FCB India · 2021
UNAIDS' 'The Mirror' for Transgender Day of Visibility: gender-diversity taboos broken down where they start - childhood - because transgender teenagers attempt suicide at far higher rates. The insight: the mirror is where a child first meets themselves; the campaign asks the world to let that refle
PSA advertising represents advertising at its most purposeful and its most demanding. Without a commercial product to shift, the only measure of success is behavioural change - and behavioural change is stubbornly resistant to advertising. The campaigns that achieved it did so by finding surprising creative routes into the audience's actual emotional reality, rather than lecturing them about what they already knew.