Random Thought: Awareness is Support

Apparently today is the national To Write Love On Her Arms day, at least that is what I am hearing from a lot of my friends. So of course I call up Cody to find out what this is all about, because I have no idea and am behind on news as usual. To Write Love On Her Arms (TWLOHA) is an organization whose goal is to give hope and find help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide, and to help raise support for their cause, they asked that today you write “Love” on your arm so people can see it. This way when asked what it is for, you can tell them about it. This is what Cody was telling me, when someone else (don’t know who, couldn’t hear) started saying that this was a stupid promotion and doesn’t raise any support because there is no fund raising (or something like that). This started enough of an argument on Cody’s part that he had to say Goodbye to me to fight for his side. So I didn’t get the full story, but from what I’m thinking the argument was about; here is my side:

Not all promotions to raise support for organizations like TWLOHA involve the giving of money. In the Marketing and Advertising world this is what we call a “Branding Campaign”. It’s whole purpose is to make people interested enough to find out more about it. Or, in terms of a non-profit movement, it creates Awareness. Fund raising is very important to any not for profit, but if no one knows about you, then you’ll never raise any funds. I believe the other side was saying that this doesn’t really benefit the company at all. I disagree, and know for a fact that companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to create brand awareness. Not to get people to buy their product, but just so that, for example, when you think of a small medical bandage for simple cuts and scrapes, you call it a …? You see, I would put the answer, but it has a copywrite. I would argue, that Awareness is the best kind of Support.

Now the follow up question people usually would ask is “Does it work?”. And the answer is yes. Look at me for an example. Here I am reading all these Facebook status updates about my friends writing “Love” on their arms, and asking if others have too, and I finally ask what it means. Now I know, and how much did TWLOHA pay for that? Nothing. That’s not stupid, that’s smart advertising!

And yes, I did write Love on my arm… did you?