In the dark ages before facebook, “Social Advertising” meant ads for good causes. The new FIFA campaign “Football for Hope”, that is flickering on stadium advertising screens during the world cup games in South Africa, is social in this old school sense. If the world hadn’t been vuvuzelaed into catatonic stupor, some among the tv-audience might even have googled it.

What they would have found is a FIFA supported effort to establish a combination of football and education facilities in communities that are usually too poor to afford either.

I had the chance to talk to Mike Geddes, the Football for Hope project manager who is working for streetfootballworld, the NGO that FIFA has teamed up with to organize Football for Hope. What I find rather interesting, is that FIFA made all the major sponsors participate in Corporate Social Responsibility projects, without prescribing what each and everyone could do. The Siyakhona project that I visited, is part of Sony’s commitment.

Most of the interview is about the steps involved in finding the right sponsor for something like Siyakhona. But of course, I also had to aske Mike about the option of using Corporate Social Responsibility campaigns to create advertising. :-)

BTW: Here is FIFA’s official page. (Who designed this?)

http://www.fifa.com/aboutfifa/worldwideprograms/footballforhope/index.html