Advocacy:  public support for or recommendation of a particular cause or policy.

Advocacy is an activity that people have been participating in for a while now. It’s an activity in which an individual or group aims to influence decisions within political, economic, social systems and institutions. Advocacy can include many activities that a person or organization undertakes including media campaigns, public speaking, etc.

Groups and organizations involved in advocacy work have been using the internet to accomplish their organizational goals. Since we are now in this digital age, more organizations are using the internet with the belief that the internet will increase the effectiveness of advocacy-related communication which suggests that social media efforts are beneficial to the advocacy community.

This advocacy campaign hits the viewer on a more personal level, it opens our eyes (literally) to the realness of the situation. Rather than seeing their own likeness when they looked into the mirror, they saw Kris Caudilla, looking back at them in blue prison overalls sharing his own personal tragic story and warning them not to make the same mistake he did by driving drunk.

Everyday whether we notice them or not, we encounter multiple advocacy campaigning. Whether we are sitting on the subway and notice the campaigns plastered on the subway walls or walking down the street having advocates from an organization approach us asking us to support their cause. The real difference from my perspective between what is an effective advocacy campaign and what isn’t is whether it “hits home.”

In the advocacy campaign I chose to show, we saw the unexpected; We didn’t expect for Kris to tell us his story. The party-goers came into the bathroom holding their drink all cheerful, after looking into the mirror and seeing Kris and listening to him talk their whole demeanor changed (notice their facial expressions and tone of voice). We seem to be more unreceptive to causes we are in denial about, are unrelate-able, or simply do not care about. Kris took us past all of those unreceptive circumstances, he made it PERSONAL; he took us out of the denial, made it relatable and made us care.