Basement Inc's contribution: creative

Doug Schumacher, president / creative director, Basement Inc., explains:

Doug Weaver first told me about Tom's [Deierlein] story, and that alone was really all the convincing we needed. The "Boardroom to Baghdad" transition reads like a movie script. And, of course, that's just the beginning of his story. In the end, though, I think the same thing appealed to us that compelled Tom to start the Foundation in the first place -- the chance to have a positive impact on the lives of children who are living in a war zone.

Before we ever got into the creative, Mark Silva and I had several good discussions about the overarching strategy. And those conversations sprang out of input from Tom.

We started out by considering the top target audience segments -- based on Tom's experience with where donations and interest in general were coming from. And the segments were quite diverse on a lot of fronts. In fact, they were so diverse that we considered appealing to each independently -- we thought it might help us hit stronger emotional cords without alienating anyone politically.

But while the Iraq war is very divisive, children have strong universal appeal. And these kids are literally living in a war zone. The severity of their situation is something most people can understand. So that was the common thread throughout the messaging.