Kitcatt Nohr Digitas

It's January. First week back at work. Cold, wet and dark all the time, feels like. You're down in the tube, nose to armpit in a steaming viral capsule, lurching towards the same job that left you a frayed, hungover dishrag in the final tattered days of last year. Why, you ask yourself? Is this it?

Well, we could hardly write that ad. The one that tells you your life is shit, throws you a lifeline and offers you a chance to do something more. But in essence, that was VSO's proposition. 'Are you sure this is all you want?'

VSO sends people off to the world's poorest countries. Not gap year ingenues, but experienced professionals - average age, 38 - who can go and live and work among people who get by on less than a pound a day. Who can transfer some of their experience and expertise to the people they work with, over a two year stay, and give those people a chance to escape poverty.

It's a tough job, and VSO was struggling to find enough volunteers. So we wrote this ad - pointing out, without being offensive, that our regular commuting lives might not be the greatest testament to human endeavour. That there is a way you can make a difference.

The ad was going to be a one-off, only on the tube in London. But it did so well, the client ran it in Manchester. Then Scotland. Dublin. Back to London, on the overground. Then in Metro. Then in the national press. Then they asked us for another ad, and another, and a fourth.

It worked. The best of it was watching people read it on the tube, and put the number into their phones, to call when they surfaced. And later, reading a volunteer's story, from her posting in Bangladesh, which started, 'I was stalked by this ad...'