How Altruism and Advertising Could Change the World

I have to admit that when I saw the article´s title, immediately bad thoughts ran through my mind. Just reading the words “advertising” and “change the world” made me think something negative, but on the other hand, the word altruism made me even more interested in reading the article. What is making advertising and altruism to come together? After reading the first two sentences I was surprised. This article was really a lot more interesting and important than what I expected, and I really enjoyed reading it because it made me feel that not everything is only bad news. This article is about the new and great idea that has been developed by two very successful business people.

Marketing veteran Cindy Gallop and software developer Wendell Davis, are joining together to help the world be a better place. The idea that they have is to create a web site named IfWeRantheWorld.com, in which people can really help any cause they want to. As the article says, “Rather than raising awareness, the site is set up to convert intent into action, to get things done. As a side effect, it could reinvent advertising as a transparent interaction between corporations and individuals”. They think that even though there are a lot of “good doer networks”, they don’t work because people find them very boring, but this one, instead, is going to be an excellent one.

When people open the homepage, a Google like search box will appear, with the phrase “If I ran the world I would…”. Then after you search for something, comes a lot of information on what can you do for that cause, actual little tasks, and you can pass them to a friend, find people, complete your little task and put it on your created profile so that everyone can see what you are doing and get motivated. It also works as a social network, like facebook. Gallop and Davis are gaining money out of this because corporations will participate in the system for an anal fee. This will also help the corporations because for example if Coca Cola wants to target 18-25 year old people, they have to find the action platform that is most helped by this target and provide financial or employee support. In that way advertising and social networking are not just there doing what they usually do, but also supporting great causes.

I think that this is a great idea. If developed correctly, it can really make a difference in the world. For me it was very pleasing to read this article and realizing that there are people trying to make a difference and not worrying just about business and money. We all have to read this article because I think that we, as generation Y, are the inspiration for this idea. In a society that is greatly using the internet for everything, something like this had to be created. Let´s hope that their intentions and goals with this project are truly the ones they say, and if they are, that the project can come true as fast as possible.

Beth Kanter is a leader of the non profit organization and she talks about non profit involvement on line: