Communications strategy & creative services for
nonprofits, causes, and corporate social responsibility

Nuru International

[Advocate Creative is the former creative services team of Nuru International. We continue to provide Nuru's creative services as Advocate Creative.]

Nuru International launched in September 2008 with a big vision, a few staff, and a burning desire to fight extreme poverty. We went to work building the brand, creating a website, designing marketing collateral, printing t-shirts, taking photos, editing videos, planning and executing fundraising campaigns, helping care for donors, releasing annual reports, emailing newsletters, authoring DVDs, making PowerPoint presentations, writing copy, and drinking much too much coffee.

Over the next three-a-half years Nuru grew from a small organization struggling to make payroll to a $4.2M high impact nonprofit. While there are plenty of remarkable stories to tell about our involvement with Nuru International, we’d like to highlight a specific brand building/fundraising campaign around the release of a video entitled The End (Jake’s Story).

… might be the most compelling PSA you’ll see this year.

Adfreak.com

For months we’d been begging Nuru International’s Founder/CEO Jake Harriman to let us tell his story in a video, but he refused. He didn’t want anyone to think that Nuru was about him, and he didn’t want the personal attention. We appreciated his humility, yet we believed that telling his story would put Nuru on the map. After about a year of asking (nagging), we finally got the green light, but only if we tied in a recurring giving campaign to allow current and prospective donors the opportunity to become members. We eagerly agreed.

The creative brief was open except that we needed to tell Jake’s story in the most compelling way possible. We decided on a mix of direct address interview, archival news footage, pencil sketch animation, and footage from Nuru’s project in Kenya. We knew that the soundtrack was going to be critical, so we connected with Tyler Bates, composer of Hollywood blockbusters 300, The Watchmen, and The Day The Earth Stood Still, and he generously agreed to donate an original score.

It is hard to surprise me with new creative work after blogging four years about social advertising. But Nuru did! …Gorgeous videos all made in house.

Osocio.com

We then filmed another video promoting the recurring giving campaign, prepared press releases and email newsletter blasts, and recruited Nuru’s staff and our Facebook fans to unleash a flurry of status updates, tweets, and personal emails.

The video was released on Veteran’s Day and it quickly took on a life of its own. Thanks to the team effort, the video quickly racked up thousands of views, appeared in an article on Apple.com’s Hot News, was featured on Facebook Nonprofits and on the ONE Campaign’s website. Adfreak.com said it, “might be the most compelling PSA you’ll see this year.” A couple of weeks later we released the other video promoting our recurring giving campaign and it too made a huge impression. Osocio.com said, “It is hard to surprise me with new creative work after blogging four years about social advertising. But Nuru did! …Gorgeous videos all made in house.”

All told, The End (Jake’s Story) and the subsequent recurring giver campaign resulted in dozens of new volunteers, over 200 new recurring donors, numerous press hits, speaking engagements, important introductions, and new opportunities. The video was awarded with two Silver Telly Awards for Online Video (the highest-level honors) and did put Nuru International on the map, changing its organizational trajectory forever.

…now that I’ve worked with [Advocate Creative], I can’t imagine growing Nuru without them.

Jake Harriman, Founder/CEO Nuru International

“Nuru International wouldn’t be what it is today without the team that makes up Advocate Creative,” said Nuru International’s Founder/CEO Jake Harriman. “At the start of Nuru, I didn’t fully understand how incredibly important communications strategy and creative services would be to growing a nonprofit. But now that I’ve worked with these guys, I can’t imagine growing Nuru without them.”

Advocate Creative understood and communicated TeachAIDS’ vision, passion, and ethos in a video that’s less than two minutes. Amazing.

Dr. Piya Sorcar, Founder/CEO TeachAIDS

TeachAIDS

TeachAIDS is a young nonprofit organization that has developed the most effective HIV & AIDS prevention education in the world. They needed a branding video to catalyze the movement forming around their organization and their vision for the future. TeachAIDS turned to Advocate Creative for help and we jumped at the chance to get involved.

We were able to piggyback the opening and closing shot off of a shoot for another client. We then set to work animating chalk drawings, creating clouds of pictures and words and building an exercise book that magically flipped its own pages. Those visuals were combined with voices from around the world, an original score, and sound design that seamlessly join the virtual scenes with live action.

The video has been shown all around the world in a variety of contexts, and it accompanies TeachAIDS’ curriculum which has been distributed to hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

Dr. Piya Sorcar, Co-Founder/CEO of TeachAIDS said, “We sought out Advocate Creative’s services after seeing their outstanding work with another nonprofit. We even turned down multiple pro bono offers from other companies to pay Advocate Creative to create our video and produce our marketing materials. The video they created has opened doors, rallied our base, and been a calling card at speaking events. Advocate Creative understood and communicated TeachAIDS’ vision, passion, and ethos in a video that’s less than two minutes. Amazing. We’ll continue working with them in the future.”

Since the video’s release, Advocate Creative has created TeachAIDS first annual report, designed marketing collateral, redesigned their homepage, and helped fine-tune a PowerPoint presentation. It is our hope that as TeachAIDS continues to grow across the globe our relationship will continue to grow as well.

Doug Scott

Principal/Creative Director

Doug is an award-winning creative director with over thirteen years of nonprofit communications experience. In his three-year stint as Creative Director at Nuru International, Doug was a member of the executive team, managed fundraising campaigns, and led the organization’s in-house creative services department to receive 14 awards. His work has been featured by the likes of Apple, the ONE Campaign, Osocio.com and AdFreak.com. Doug is a global citizen having traveled in 50 countries and has earned a Bachelor of Arts in International Communications from DePaul University. He is passionate about helping organizations effectively and efficiently achieve their missions through improved communications.

Randy Warren

Filmmaker

Randy is an award-winning video director/editor. He’s been telling the stories of some of the world’s leading nonprofit organizations for over 15 years and his work has been featured on ONE.org, Osocio.org, and Facebook Nonprofits. He is passionate about visual storytelling and the process of creative collaboration. Experienced in a wide variety of storytelling styles ranging from documentary, short film, animation and music video, he’s filmed on location in Latin America, Europe and Africa.

Ryan Trommer

Motion, Vfx, Web & Print Design

Ryan is an award-winning motion designer whose skills and interests define the word eclectic. After earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Commercial Music from Millikin University, Ryan has worked as a recording engineer, A/V technician, web developer in HTML/CSS, Flash, PHP, ASP, Javascript, and SQL, print/web/motion designer, and is an amateur inventor. Ryan is passionate about communicating the complex in simple, beautiful and compelling ways, and his diverse skill set informs and refines all aspects of production.

Mallory Minor

Producer

Mallory is a producer and award-winning coffee maker (just wanted to fit in with the guys) with six years of experience in media production and three years in nonprofit management. After earning her Bachelor of Arts in Communications from the University of California Santa Barbara, she began her career in media production in Los Angeles where she worked on various networks sitcoms and dramas for network TV, including Fox’s ‘Til Death and NBC’s ER. Eventually, she crossed over into special effects and animation where she worked as a producer on feature films and commercials. Most recently, she lived in Kenya over the past three years as the director of child sponsorship and communications for a NPO that focuses on orphan care. She is inspired by people who fight for justice and loves to partner alongside these people using media and art as a way get these important messages out into the world and further the cause.