ARC Inc.

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Oct. 24, 2008) -

Editors Note: A photo and a video are included with this press release.

Billie Mintz, President of social media advocacy production company ARC Inc (Artists Raising Consciousness) recently leased his friend's facebook profile status line to communicate messages to a network beyond his own. Mintz, newly awarded Toronto Entrepreneur of the Year by Enterprise Toronto, rented his friend's status line for six days to help spread the word about his latest project and increase membership to his facebook group, The Message in The Bottle, that will join facebook users together with all organizations and individuals that raise awareness around responsible choices with alcohol.

"My friend's status one day was 'who wants to rent my facebook status?', and I thought, what a great idea to reach a different group of people," says Mintz. "We negotiated a price based on the size of his network, and then I immediately started broadcasting my messages - kind of like renting ad space."

ARC works with large corporations and on their philanthropic initiatives, and Mintz is always looking for new ways to connect those organizations to their target audiences through social media and innovative communications. His latest project, a 12-part video series about the issue of responsible choices with alcohol, will be released online with tools such as blogs, YouTube, facebook, twitter and MySpace. The project, supported by Molson, will highlight the efforts of Molson and other NGOs (OCCID, The Student Life Education Company) who are making large efforts in getting the message out around responsible alcohol use.

"Large corporations have great power to evoke change," says Mintz. "Many of their target audiences are online, and I think those users deserve to know about the organizations that think beyond the bottom line and strive to make the world a better place to live."

Billie will continue to test the value of renting facebook profile statuses -- agreements to rent other highly networked friend's status lines are in place and under negotiation.

"I want to explore this idea further while still keeping in mind that transparency online is a big part of how we communicate online and how the companies we work with communicate online," Billie adds. "People should always know who is behind the message."

ARC Institute (Artists Raising Consciousness) was founded in 1999 by Billie Mintz to advance the awareness of social issues through the creation of films tailored to specific causes. The goal of ARC's projects is to create new outlets for philanthropic progress; the individual pieces will convey the mandate of a given cause through non-traditional 'storytelling' and social media. ARC works with both charitable organizations and large corporations that have strong commitments to social change, volunteerism and philanthropic initiatives. ARC's most recent work can be seen on their website and Molson's Community Blog.