Healthy eating starts on the farm

My God, it's hard to be a good parent these days. Especially when you've got a two-income family and very little time between wrapping up work, getting the kid(s) home, feeding them, and putting them to bed. Soon, the soup cans and KD boxes start piling up in your recycling, and you wonder whatever happened to home cooked meals.

Well, there is an alternative. And it starts with teaching your kids to appreciate real food.



This is a fun little video Acart's Cause Loop (our employee-run CSR committee) did for the Fill-A-Bus programme at the Canadian Agricultural Museum.

Fill-a-Bus sends kids to the Ag Museum's summer day camp, where kids learn more about how the food they eat is grown and raised. It's a first step in getting them to think "outside the box" (sorry) when it comes to mealtimes.

And the little dude in the blue shirt who knows all the answers? He's mine.

Yeah, we've been practising what we preach at Chez Adman.

To donate to Fill-A-Bus, go here.

Cleaning up this town...

For the second year in a row, Acart's Cause Loop (our corporate social responsibility committee) organized a clean up of the block of Nepean Street in front of our downtown Ottawa office.



Everyone who could spare an hour came out in amusingly decorated hazmat suits to remove a year's worth of cigarette butts, beer caps, Timmy's cups and worse from our block.

We had a good time, thanks to the unbridled enthusiasm of my 5-year-old son (a nature-lovin' litter-hater who pitched in last year as well). And hopefully we showed the neighbours and passers by that we are proud of — and dedicated to — our inner-city community.

Plus we had the pleasure of noting that the street was much cleaner this year than last. And we only had to deal with two dead birds, one "white balloon" (as I called it to my son) and two (empty) dope baggies!

See more pics below, or view the whole (growing) photo album on our Facebook page.

Are You Game?

Design21 Social Design Network, in partnership with UNESCO, is holding an international competition to design a game that aims to create change by improving lives or inspiring new behaviors. (via Osocio)

The Social Design Network is a member organization with a mission to "inspire social activism through design".

According to the brief:

Design a game that aims to create change by improving lives or inspiring new behaviors.

A crisis can bring about change. It forces us to rethink our lives and our relationships and lead us to adopt new outlooks or rethink the way we do things. While the world has been rocked by a deep recession, many have seen the flip-side of this crisis as one of opportunity; the chance to start over, or reset priorities, to take initiative to create some positive and meaningful change in their lives, big or small.

The goal of this competition is to come up with the idea and design for a game that can improve lives or inspire new behaviors, whether personally, professionally or communally, to create change.

The game could teach an individual or a group new life skills or propose a more sustainable way of living, working or interacting either at home or in our community. It does not have to operate on a grand scale. Small is also welcome. The objective and spirit of the game should be to inspire or create positive change.

It can be a digital or online game, or take the form of a traditional board game, or simply be an activity that is interactive (like charades, for example). It can be designed for one, two or more "players." But it must be a game and that also means involving an element of fun.

Your game must be clearly explained with images and words (not words alone).

You must not enter any design that already exists on the market or has been put into commercial production, or that you do not own the rights to.

You must join the network to enter, and entries will be judged on the quality of the idea and how well it responds to the brief. There are cash prizes, as well as a people's choice.

You need to apply by May 11. Public voting is two days later. And the results will be announced on June 1.

So, are you game for changing the world by putting your work to play?

This is what they call a "teaser"

Please tune in tomorrow to show your support, and to watch us show ours.



This year, an estimated 22,700 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 5,400 will die of it. (An estimated 180 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 50 will die of it.)

One in 9 women is expected to develop breast cancer during her lifetime and one in 28 will die of it.

Most women who develop breast cancer have no risk factors other than simply being a woman and getting older.

Breakfast of Champions (of work that matters)

As I've said before, we at Acart want to "walk the walk" when it comes to using our advertising powers for good and not evil. But we're also aware that we remain incredibly fortunate people with good jobs and a high quality of life.

Living and working in Ottawa, we also benefit from a surplus of food. Between catered meetings, work lunches, and the constant availability of various office treats it seems like Acartians will never go hungry. But this is not the case for many Canadians — including the children of low-income families in isolated communities.

We’d like to change that, for at least one child, by asking ourselves, our colleagues and clients to donate spare pocket change to a breakfast program in Nunavut.

Starting Friday, there will be a collection jar to collect spare change in our agency kitchen. Our first goal is to raise $360 by the end of August, which will ensure one child gets a nutritious breakfast every day for the 2009-2010 school year.

You’d be amazed what a difference a good breakfast can make. According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, almost one-quarter of Canadian elementary school kids do not eat breakfast daily, which affects learning ability and physical development, and can lead to lifelong health problems.



We launched the program today with a pot-luck breakfast donated by our "Cause Loop", and the jar is already filling up. Want to help? If you drop by the agency, or know someone who does, please feel free to add to the change...

Taking our message to the street

As a Social Issues Marketing guy, I spend a lot of time pondering why people do what they do, how it affects others, and how I can help them make better choices for themselves and their communities.

I also want to "walk the walk". We all do at Acart. Which is why we take a little time out of our insane ad-biz schedules to try and set an example for our clients, industry, and neighbours. Sometimes we raise money, sometimes we provide publicity for worthy causes, and sometimes we just get our hands dirty.

And so we ended up out on the street this Tuesday, with gloves, brooms and bags, to clean up the block in front of our office.

It was pretty gross, since we're in the middle of downtown Ottawa, but we didn't find much worse than broken hooch bottles, millions of cigarette butts, and endless Tim Horton's cups. (I had to keep a keen eye out, too, since my 4-year-old son was helping pick up the trash: "Look daddy! I found a white balloon!")

Did we have any impact on our City? Probably not. But for us it was a way to make ourselves aware of where our agency fits into the core community. As we sit up in the Acart Building, creating campaigns to try to help people, there are folks outside scavenging butts for charred tobacco, panhandling, and generally having nothing to do but hang out on the corner. (They watched us clean with a mixture of confusion and amusement.)

Creating effective social marketing requires an emotional commitment on the part of its practitioners. You have to understand your audience, and empathize with them, or you'll end up creating ads that are ineffective, or even worse, that totally backfire.

Our various outreach initiatives may not be changing the world in any measurable way, but for us they're helping provide a more realistic insight into the world of issues around our daily lives, whether its raising bit of cash to help war victims get wheelchairs, or just reminding ourselves that we're all responsible for the state of our community.

Plus, it's nice to get out of the agency now and then.