DULUX / LET'S COLOUR

Dulux's 'Let's Colour' by Euro RSCG London. It's fantastic: a crack team from Dulux travels the world, partnering with local communities to rejuvenate areas of urban decay. Apparently brand representatives, bloggers, Dulux executives and creatives from the agency visited Jodhpur, Rio de Janeiro, Paris, London, among other cities.

Armed with brushes, ladders and cans of paint, they created a 'colour movement'. They organised groups of people in these challenged communities who then set about beautifying their houses, streets, squares, schools and even a multi-story parking lot.

Doesn't sound exciting when you read about it here, but when you see the result, you're flabbergasted. Just by covering graffiti, old paint and human-less concrete, they revive everything; entire rows of buildings and tracts, entire areas are visually lifted out of despair.

What was once depressing becomes delightful. What was once dark becomes bright. What was once scary becomes welcoming. The grey is out, the gloom is literally gone. Progress from each city was documented by members of the team via their Twitter feeds and a video and photo journal was compiled at the campaign blog (www.letscolourproject.com). Very moving indeed.

This is an example of a simple, truthful and deliverable idea that positively affects people's lives everyday. It makes you feel proud to see marketing that doesn't put annoying cultural pollution out there but, rather, injects a form of optimism and hope.

And it's an idea that will last well beyond a 4-week window - it'll keep giving 'til a new coat of paint is needed.

Check out the latest issue of Contagious, published in a couple of weeks time to see how we've used some of the stunning imagery from the Dulux campaign, along with a bit of help from Stickybits to create a compelling design for our cover