30 count-em 30 trendy charity things

The FSM/syphilis posted earlier today is a goofy illustration of why do-gooder cause marketers need to think about how folks outside the bubble will see their ad--one group's Serious Message is another's joke. Trendhunter's #1 item on its list of 30 charity trends--Shockvertising--highlights a trend we've seen a number of times here in Uncivil: the increasing use of (ostensibly) disturbing images in PSAs.

Do these ads really work? I imagine folks who use them would say they attention they receive on the web proves they do the job of promoting awareness of the cause. But whether it does that in a way that actually leads to positive corrective action is not so clear. For me, most of this stuff comes across as contrived and cliched; transgressive stopped being transgressive by the 1980s at the latest, when Transgressing Boundaries became the way to show that you were part of the in-crowd. When everyone's transgressive no one's transgressive, so why bother?

My own preference: boo shock; yay fun.