"Nigerian Sesame Street (Sesame Square) will address the biggest challenges faced by Nigerians…in addition to HIV/AIDS, also religion, gender inequality, AND Malaria. In one episode muppet ZOBI gets caught up in a mosquito net to teach kids how to use them and prevent a malaria infection because according to the World Health Organization, a child dies from the disease every 45 seconds."
Zobi, by the way, is an African version of Cookie Monster — except that he craves yams.
Kudos to Sesame Street for continuing to address uncomfortable issues that kids nonetheless have to deal with (I still remember when Mr. Hooper died). Although I was a little disappointed when they caved to uptight parental pressures on the bouncy Katy Perry musical number.
I got word last weekend from MTV Canada's Aliya Jasmine Sovani, better known to the world as the star of last year's controversial and popular "Save The Boobs" video, that this year's promo video is out.
Interestingly, after last year's swimsuit edition provoked controversy over the sexualization of breast cancer, this year the Boobyball crew decided to take a more humorous approach to promoting their Rethink Breast Cancer charity party:
Okay, so it's pretty goofy. But at least they had some fun with the send-up of 70s porn.
Unfortunately, as of this writing, the video is still unavailable on YouTube. I can only imagine that MTV, after seeing diverse postings of last year's video getting hundreds of thousands of hits, decided that all that traffic should be directed to their corporate site.
The problem is, the video is not easy to share or embed. This will inevitably lead to far fewer views, and far less awareness for this year's event.
Yesterday, I responded to a Facebook ad to strip down to my underwear for a good cause. (Who wouldn't?) It landed me at The Underwear Affair, a 5-city Canadian fundraising event "to fight cancers below the waist" (prostate, ovarian, and colorectal).
The event takes place in Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver. Being an Ottawa guy, I clicked on my local link to find out more. It's going on here this year on September 11 (odd choice) and has two events, a 10K run or 5K walk, for participants of all ages. The recipient is the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation.
The idea of the event is to be as fun, sexy or silly as possible.
(This one's from the original American version, in L.A.)
The Ottawa launch event, held on Sparks Street, is on YouTube:
As is the (stealth? 17 views?) promo video:
They also have a national Facebook Group and Twitter feed. The main corporate sponsor is Mark's Work Wearhouse.
So, will you get yer gitch on and join the cause? There is certainly no shortage of opportunities to do silly things to fight cancer. This particular one seems to have a lot of support out west, although the Ottawa media uptake seems a little underwhelming so far.
But then again, one should never underestimate the powerful combination of partial nudity and an important cause.
Maybe for this blog, if not for the cause. But here goes. It's a jiggly new PSA for Boobyball, an annual Toronto event "to inspire a new generation of young philanthropists to get involved and create a future without breast cancer".
Let's see what this ad inspires in you:
In case you're wondering who is exploiting whom, the woman in the ads is Aliya Jasmine Sovani, from MTV Canada. She's the co-chair of the event in support of Rethink Breast Cancer, and the writer, co-producer and Creative Director of the spot.
Here's what she thinks of it:
The basic idea is that young people aren't responding to breast cancer information featuring older women and sad situations. The ad is designed to appeal to a generation who have grown up with "Girls Gone Wild" and a generally "show me" culture. So instead of talking about disease and death, the PSA talks about how much everyone loves breasts.
Knowing (older) people who have, or have had, breast cancer, I'm not so sure they'd find this approach tasteful or appropriate. On the other hand, so many ads use breasts to get attention to sell useless things. At least these ones are out there for a cause.
What do you think?
**UPDATE: This viral has made CNN. The question now is, will the spot raise the profile of breast cancer prevention and detection worldwide, or just that of Ms. Sovani?**
**UPDATE 2: Kerry wanted to know what the song in the video was, so I creeped Aliya Jasmine on Facebook, and passed on the query. She wrote back to say it's called "The girl is Mine" by Rosnick. Can't find a band link, but thanks for the intel! (I am still, however, awaiting confirmation on that friend request...)
