People power: how brands are changing their fortunes by changing the world

Alex Lewis

This article looks at how brands have used people to both encourage social change and improve advertising effectiveness through seven key "ingredients".

I remember when I first experienced Save the Children's 2012 Christmas appeal. It was 14 December. I was sitting on the tube. Looking at the most ghastly piece of knitwear I'd seen for a long, long time.

Throughout that Friday I would go on to see dozens of God-awful jumpers all over London. Then there it was in the Evening Standard (just some of the £1.4 million earned media value that day). I may not have known it, but I was witnessing the birth of Christmas Jumper Day.

The following year I would join them (a tasteful Rudolf...

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