THE National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York is commemorating the 13th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks with a new video narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, and a Twitter-enabled fund-raising campaign.
Both were created pro bono by the New York office of BBDO Worldwide, part of the Omnicom Group, and will be introduced on Tuesday.
The agency has been involved in many 9/11-related advertising campaigns since shortly after the attacks. At the request of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, it created a global campaign, called the “New York Miracle,” for the 2001 Christmas season, and featured prominent New Yorkers like Ben Stiller, Woody Allen, Billy Crystal and Henry Kissinger.
The new film — which is two minutes long and was made under the direction of the BBDO New York creative directors Rick Williams and Marcel Yunes, with animation by Elastic — illustrates the story of the “survivor tree.”
A callery pear tree planted on Church Street at the World Trade Center was badly burned on Sept. 11, 2001. It was dug out of the rubble six weeks later as a stump with one green leaf. The New York City Parks Department took the tree to Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, where it was nursed back to health. It was taken back to the 9/11 Memorial in 2010 and is the only tree there today that is not an oak.
Narrated by Ms. Goldberg, also a New Yorker, who speaks as the tree, the story says: “I was a strong pear tree at the World Trade Center. I was strong every spring. I was strong every winter.”
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/
