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Awareness Campaigns
TankHammer
Extreme GhostbusterRegistered User regular
Extreme GhostbusterRegistered User regular
I recently started looking into various methods of public-awareness and charity campaigns in recent years. We've seen some very interesting and creative ways of getting word out lately, mostly due to the effect mainstream advertising has had in desensitizing us to the ads all around us.
(PRODUCT)RED is one of my favorites so far, going to consumer products and other commonly-seen items and having these companies make red versions. The red iPod Nano made headlines when the campaign launched and I have to say that Motorola's red phones are pretty attractive. The campaign is to raise support and awareness to battle the AIDS epidemic in Africa, as worthy a cause as I can think of.
A few more, older campaigns such as the anti-smoking "Truth" and "Crazy-world" campaigns that didn't take children's intelligence for granted, illustrating statistics and being generally more aggressive than any past "say no to smoking" ads I saw growing up.
I'd like to see more of these campaigns, maybe a few that don't get as much recognition as they should. If any of you have shared an interest in this type of not-for-profit marketing and have a few notable campaigns you'd like to make note of, go for it.
(PRODUCT)RED is one of my favorites so far, going to consumer products and other commonly-seen items and having these companies make red versions. The red iPod Nano made headlines when the campaign launched and I have to say that Motorola's red phones are pretty attractive. The campaign is to raise support and awareness to battle the AIDS epidemic in Africa, as worthy a cause as I can think of.
A few more, older campaigns such as the anti-smoking "Truth" and "Crazy-world" campaigns that didn't take children's intelligence for granted, illustrating statistics and being generally more aggressive than any past "say no to smoking" ads I saw growing up.
I'd like to see more of these campaigns, maybe a few that don't get as much recognition as they should. If any of you have shared an interest in this type of not-for-profit marketing and have a few notable campaigns you'd like to make note of, go for it.
TankHammer on
TankHammer | 
JoeJRicc
Posts
It would be pretty nice to have a website devoted to "Shit you really should know."
"What this? Oh this is my New York Yankees bracelet. It cost me 2 dollars and all the proceeds go to the NYY gift-shop."
"Bu- Okay nevermind, I'm just going to have to kill you."
Yeah.
They have ones for XBox too.
I saw'em at Best Buy.
For a moment, it looked like a Playstation.
It's not as bad as the "smoking pot will make you rape your friends" commercial, but it's definitely not an effective approach. I've seen two commercials that approach "quit-smoking" in a way that sympathises with the smoker who wants to quit but can't, up against dozens that essentially brand all smokers as people who walk into kindergarten classes and shoot the place up with a MAC-10 for a laugh.
Drunks Against Mad Mothers
I think they were well-exercised campaigns. I don't think you saw the ones I am referring to.
Drunks Against Mad Mothers
C'mon let's get some more informative ad campaigns in here. I'm curious as to how many groups are getting the word out in a positive way.
Even though I severely disagree with PETA and any kind of militaristic pro-vegitarian/veganism campaign I do have to give kudos to the "We are not nuggets" (see below) ad they ran. It's got a big impact.
Morally they are wrong to use emotional advertising and put it in things like my little sister's teen magazines, but their marketing department made a very strong statement here.
You don't have to agree with the message to recognize a strong campaign.
Drunks Against Mad Mothers
B) Then maybe they should try a way that works. It's fucking common knowledge that calling someone an asshole over and over won't turn them over to your side, look at disenfranchised Catholics for fuck's sake. The only reason anyone with even the tiniest fraction of a functional brain would call an entire group of people assholes over and over is to turn the rest of the audience against that group.
Drunks Against Mad Mothers
there strong and then there's this
Trying to makeg little kids terrified of their parents is such a fucked up idea on so many levels.
IF YOU SMOKE THE GANJA EVEN ONCE
AND THEN YOU LIVE IN A HOUSE THAT KEEPS A LOADED GUN IN THE KITCHEN
AND THEN YOU HAVE A FRIEND OVER WHO ALSO GETS HIGH
AND THEN YOU AND YOUR FRIEND ARE IN THE KITCHEN
AND YOU OPEN THE CABINET IN WHICH THE GUN IS KEPT AND TAKE THE GUN OUT
AND THEN TURN THE SAFETY OFF
AND THEN YOU POINT THE GUN AT YOUR FRIENDS' FACE
AND THEN YOU PULL THE TRIGGER
MARIJUANA KILLS BY IMPARING JUDGEMENT KIDS
BOOM HEADSHOT
Meat is way too delicious to give up though. It'll be a cold day in hell when I stop eating BBQ and other still-animal-shaped meats.
PETA is disgusting and they pull in a lot of ignorant bleeding-hearts who don't know how fucked up they are.
Also, let's please not turn this into a "Anti-Drug commercials are so inaccurate to reality" thread. Maybe there's a "Smokin Weed ain't so Bad" campaign you know about you'd like to discuss?
I'm doing Movember for Men's Health! Donate if you can - thanks.
Kid picks up phone
"John, wassup, man?"
"I was so high last night..."
"What? Well, how she'd get home?"
"John, you no that's not me, man"
*Click*
Moral of the story: Marijuana will make you do bad things.
EDIT: I should add more to the discussion than that.
Basically, I don't know what the hell the hope to accomplish with shitty fear-mongering commercials like that. They don't even tell you what the kid did that was so bad, all you know is he was "soooo high last night" and now his friend hates him or something. They arn't even trying with commercials like this.
The best anti-weed commercials are the ones that tell you your "wasting your life". Of course, if all kids do when high is sit on Pete's couch, you gotta wonder why its illegal at all.
So your either wasting your life on Pete's couch or your doing something horrible to a friend or yours. This shit is called propaganda and anyone with half a brain knows it.
the basic gist was "no, smoking pot will not kill you, but there's better things to do than just vegetate all stoned on your friend's couch".
it was certainly a lot more accurate than "you and your friends killed a little girl while driving your weed-mobile out of the mcdonalds drive-thru".
Also thanks Bionic Monkey, I didn't want to say anything to 'attack him' directly but there's a bias at work there.
If there are "Truth" commercials that depict smokers as horrible people I'll be more than happy to watch them and critique them, but so far all I see are people just being all "Hey big tobacco, you said on this date you wanted to get kids to pick up smoking to replace the old people who are falling off" end scene.
The reason for the latter being, dude, people are trying to get to work. New York is not known for flowing traffic. Do not make people late for work who did not request to be told that smoking is bad. This will just make people angry at you. A few, and I have heard of at least one, will light up out of sheer spite.
That is a single clip, and it probably is legal.
irt selective-listeners;
You didn't see the "my dad was a horrible son of a bitch because he smoked and he deserves to be dead like he is" commercial or the "gang up on smokers and/or be a bunch of passive-aggressive emo fucks instead of asking someone to put out their cigarette" commercial? Or the "everyone who smokes is killing Johnny with second-hand cancer if they smoke in the car" radio commercial that specifically stated that the meaningless statistic it spat at listeners was dependent upon the driver keeping all the windows fully closed the whole time? I suppose people who aren't being directly attacked by these commercials would be able to tune them out pretty easily. Aside from the people who are desperate to find a "crusade for vengeance" to take part in so that they can feel like a badass and moralise at people, that is.
Drunks Against Mad Mothers
Personally, I find them insulting, and i'm not even a smoker. They're just so stupid, and make smokers look like they never get a date, they don't have ANY money and so forth.
Ugh.
It's not surprising that the commercials suck at their intended purpose.
Drunks Against Mad Mothers
Man who guts fish in a suit?
Also, while I like the design/ layout of the nuggets advert, I don't really think I get the point they're trying to make.
Actually i did read the thread and saw the same criticism i've seen since the ads started that they're condescending about the dangers of cigarettes and have people joke about taking up smoking to spite the ads.
I joke about it myself and hate smoking with an absolute passion.
It is surprising that the Phillip Morris ads do a much better job at actually dealing with underage smoking (which is far more worthwhile) than the truth ads.
"Oh my god, they kill cute little chicks to make chicken nuggets!? I can't eat them now!" That sort of thing.
Most definitely. The long term goal of smoking awareness campaigns isn't so much to make people go "oh wow, lung cancer. You don't say. I'm gonna ring up the Quit helpline right now", but to foster a public environment so passively hostile to smoking that people quit out of sheer awkwardness.
To be fair, many people are much more swayed by what strangers they meet think of them more than someone saying "Hey, this is why you should vote this way".
Because 9% think it's too high, and shouldn't be cut! 9% of respondents could not fully
get their arms around the question. There should be another box you can check for, "I
have utterly no idea what you're talking about. Please, God, don't ask for my input."
So I was on campus in highschool and I wanted lunch off campus - but I couldn't go because I was finishing some assignment due later in the day. So I ask a friend of mine to pick me up some takeout somewhere and drop it off in my next class.
The class goes by and I get no food. I'm left hungry and despondent for the last two periods of the day. Later I see her and she said - "Oh sorry.. I got high and forgot to get you lunch."
Really, that seems like a much more effective ad. Smoke pot, leave your friends hungry. She didn't blow my head off, she left me craving some pizza.
I didn't think the Truth ads sucked. Cigarettes do actually kill people which is somehow still lost on a lot of people. It's miles better than 'make sure to talk about it you dumbass parents.' And I can't recall a single ad which demonized smokers.
I think the message is pretty clear to hormonally charged 14 year olds.