This campaign, as I saw it on Mirror, isn't "edgy" or clever; it's just more deliberate denigration of women for eyeballs and clicks.
So why am I contributing to the problem, by sharing it here? Because we need to change the conversation about this kind of advertising, and the public spaces it pollutes. This is especially timely because Transport for London has banned other ads, such as one for the play My Night With Reg, and another for a Royal Academy of Arts exhibition on Lucas Cranach the Elder, because of artistic nudity.
This prudishness about the human body, combined with a "lad-mag" lack of sensitivity about gender issues, leads me to believe that Transport for London's advertising department is run by elderly men who have not been allowed to receive any other contact from the outside world since 1975.
I won't even talk about the brand behind these stupid ads. They're not worth my time or yours. But Transport for London needs to smarten the hell up, and develop some 21st century ad standards.
My Night With Reg is a 1994 play about gay men in London during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. This poster, for the current revival revived at the Donmar Warehouse (and now the Apollo Theatre) was rejected by Transport for London for "male nudity," according to Pink News.
In the past, Transport for London has been the subject of ridicule for its prudish advertising standards, once banning a poster for an exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts for showing a 16th century female nude by Lucas Cranach the Elder.
According to CBC, Vancouver Transit Police have agreed to remove this ad from Skytrain, following public complaints.
Transit Police spokesperson Anne Drennan stated that the victim-blaming was entirely unintentional, but added, "we see where they are coming from."
I work on campaigns like this, too, so I can see how this happened. The Copywriter was trying to use a clever turn of phrase, but didn't consider the unintended triggering of the word "shame" in the context. Neither did the client.
To their credit, however, Vancouver Transit Police have responded in a way that should be a teachable moment to other authorities creating campaigns that address the issue of sexual assault, either directly or indirectly.
First, they apologized with an acknowledgement that the wording could cause unintended harm. Then, they committed to removing the ads and replacing them with "new posters with wording approved by an advisory council that includes representatives from women's support groups."
Understand, apologize, fix the problem and show how you'll avoid it in the future. Is that so hard?
Don't get me wrong — I like the drink. But since I was old enough to understand such things, in the '80s, I have railed against a legal system in which alcohol and tobacco are perfectly legal drugs for adults and something as soft as marijuana is not.
As a matter of fact, my very first paid writing job was a full-page 1990 op ed in the Kingston Whig-Standard in which I looked at the history of drug legislation as one of socially accepted versus not-accepted drugs. It's a history that often had to do more with racism and industry than with medicine or other sciences.
So I have to admit that I like this bold campaign by The Marijuana Policy Project in Portland, Maine. According to NY Daily News, the organization spent $2,500 on a transit campaign that support's the city's ballot measure to legalize recreational adult cannabis use.
Despite complaints from people who claim the ads will encourage pot smoking by youth, the transit system says they have no choice but to leave them up, because they are genuinely political. “If we’re going to allow one type of political advertising, we have to allow it all,” a spokesperson told the Portland Press Herald. It is also notable that Greater Portland District Transit allows alcohol ads on their buses (but not tobacco), rendering the "won'tsomeonepleasethinkaboutthechildren" argument another double-standard. Medical marijuana use is already legal and regulated in Maine.
But is pot safer than booze? The death toll of alcohol through overdose, liver damage, drunk driving and alcohol-fuelled violence is well documented. Pot's potential harms, besides are barely understood.
According to the US National Institutes of Health, the problems with alcohol are simple (if sometimes devastating) but well-understood:
Alcohol affects every organ in the drinker's body and can damage a developing fetus. Intoxication can impair brain function and motor skills; heavy use can increase risk of certain cancers, stroke, and liver disease. Alcoholism or alcohol dependence is a diagnosable disease characterized by a strong craving for alcohol, and/or continued use despite harm or personal injury. Alcohol abuse, which can lead to alcoholism, is a pattern of drinking that results in harm to one's health, interpersonal relationships, or ability to work.
The same organization takes a lot longer to explain the harmful effects of marijuana, partly because the research is sparser and less conclusive:
Marijuana use can have a variety of adverse, short- and long-term effects, especially on cardiopulmonary and mental health.
Marijuana raises heart rate by 20-100 percent shortly after smoking; this effect can last up to 3 hours. In one study, it was estimated that marijuana users have a 4.8-fold increase in the risk of heart attack in the first hour after smoking the drug. This may be due to increased heart rate as well as the effects of marijuana on heart rhythms, causing palpitations and arrhythmias. This risk may be greater in older individuals or in those with cardiac vulnerabilities.
Marijuana and Driving
Because it seriously impairs judgment and motor coordination, marijuana also contributes to accidents while driving. A recent analysis of data from several studies found that marijuana use more than doubles a driver’s risk of being in an accident. Further, the combination of marijuana and alcohol is worse than either substance alone with respect to driving impairment.
Marijuana smoke is an irritant to the lungs, and frequent marijuana smokers can have many of the same respiratory problems experienced by tobacco smokers, such as daily cough and phlegm production, more frequent acute chest illness, and a heightened risk of lung infections. One study found that people who smoke marijuana frequently but do not smoke tobacco have more health problems and miss more days of work than nonsmokers, mainly because of respiratory illnesses.
A number of studies have shown an association between chronic marijuana use and mental illness. High doses of marijuana can produce a temporary psychotic reaction (involving hallucinations and paranoia) in some users, and using marijuana can worsen the course of illness in patients with schizophrenia. A series of large prospective studies also showed a link between marijuana use and later development of psychosis. This relationship was influenced by genetic variables as well as the amount of drug used and the age at which it was first taken—those who start young are at increased risk for later problems.
Associations have also been found between marijuana use and other mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts among adolescents, and personality disturbances, including a lack of motivation to engage in typically rewarding activities. More research is still needed to confirm and better understand these linkages.
Marijuana use during pregnancy is associated with increased risk of neurobehavioral problems in babies. Because THC and other compounds in marijuana mimic the body’s own cannabinoid-like chemicals, marijuana use by pregnant mothers may alter the developing endocannabinoid system in the brain of the fetus. Consequences for the child may include problems with attention, memory, and problem solving.
Finally, marijuana use has been linked in a few recent studies to an increased risk of an aggressive type of testicular cancer in young men, although further research is needed to establish whether there is a direct causal connection.
In my opinion, every drug — whether recreational or medicinal — has the potential to be good, bad or ugly. It's all a matter of how it is used.
You can read the campaign's own comparative argument for legalization at marijuanaissafer.org.
Last week, Eric shared an image that was my first exposure to the Queensland Rail Meme:
Here's the backstory: Australia's Queensland Rail, a regional interurban rail network, launched a train etiquette campaign way back in 2011. It used the style of children's first readers to show how elementary basic courtesy really is.
You get the idea. Everyone does. Which makes the campaign ripe for parody.
Buzzfeed has collected some of the "best" of the fake posters:
Despite the silliness, this is actually good news for the client. Their brand is out there, and the courtesy conversation is viral. Good on you, Queensland Rail.
The illustration is cool. The art direction is divine. But... puzzle pieces as a concept? Non e' troppo originale, ragazzi!
The following is for Milan's public transit system, ATM:
Nonetheless, this campaign from DDB Milan is a pretty simple expression of what public transit's value is to people in a big city: connecting you. Plus, it works with their colour-coded metro system, which I got to know when I lived there.
As someone who has been in transit advertising for almost 10 years, I have to say that just reinforcing the connection between transit and life is what it's all about.
Over a decade ago, I inherited my grandmother's 1977 Plymouth Fury. That was a fun car. I used to drive it around with my elbow out the window, blasting the soundtrack from Shaft, and feeling pretty retro cool.
But that car was also a pain in the ass. It was difficult to street park in the Byward Market, where I lived at the time, it used a lot of gas, and the bouncy '70s suspension made my girlfriend (and future wife) slightly queasy. It wasn't long before I sold it off.
While I knew the gas guzzling was bad for the environment, I really didn't drive it all that much. But as we now know, the worst thing about old cars is the exhaust. Exempt from emissions testing because of its age, that Fury was a major polluter. According to the owner's manual, it didn't even meet SEVENTIES emission standards in California or Colorado. I hope it has since been scrapped.
But your car doesn't need to come from the disco era to be nasty. According to Environment Canada the average pre-1995 vehicle in Canada produces 19 times more smog forming air pollution than newer models, which have to meet much more stringent emissions standards. They estimate at least five million of these nasty old burners are out on our roads now. Clearly, the time has come to retire them (at least, the ones without true vintage value).
The current initiative is incentives for vehicle scrappage, Retire Your Ride, which offers cash, discounts on new or used cars, and sustainable transportation options like bikes, car-sharing, and public transit.
That's where we come in.
As a member of — and social marketing agency for — the Canadian Urban Transit Association, our job is to try to reduce the number of cars on the road and increase transit ridership nationwide by persuading Canadians to trade in their old cars for transit passes.
Here's the campaign, which is running on busses and bus shelters in cities across Canada right now:
Yeah, I know. It's a tough sale. People love their old cars, and if they feel they depend on them for work, personal errands, or even just a sense of self worth, we realize that we probably won't get them to trade it all in for transit.
But that's not how social (or cause) marketing works. We don't preach to the choir, but we also don't preach to the parking lot. We are talking to the people in the middle, who have a car or an extra car that they don't really need. This campaign is designed to help them break up with that tired old ride by showing them that there's an option that also supports sustainable transportation.
It's talking to the guy with the rusty Fury and the queasy girlfriend.
Over the past few months, I've been working on building a network of interested colleagues, competitors, clients, friends, and curious onlookers. Now let's see what this sucker can do.
I am preparing a presentation for a public transit conference. My proposed topic is "Rider Relations 2.0". Basically, I would like to talk to them about the big opportunities for building a more responsive, transparent, and human connection with their customers using Social Media and other interactive channels.
I think the timing is right for public sector organizations, like transit commissions, to start to engage their customers in a conversation about service changes, complaints, concerns, and kudos.
For example, The Globe and Mail recently published an article about how the Toronto Transit Commission "is turning to the private sector for advice on charming customers after a fare increase and last fall's token shortage helped spur nearly a 20-per-cent increase in complaints."
Being both a member of the private sector and of the Canadian Urban Transit Association, I feel a duty to offer some free advice. And seeing as this is pro-bono work, I'm not ashamed to ask for your help.
Basically, I want to lay out for the transit people how public relations disasters, many of which play out in social media, can be turned around using those same channels and attitudes. And I want to use recent private sector consumer marketing examples.
One recent one is Domino's Pizza, who took a beating after some apparent employees posted grossout videos (since deleted, but lives on here) of what they were doing to the food.
This was part of a general brand decline, where words like "cardboard crust" have become popular brand memes.
Did Domino's quietly improve its product? Lower prices and settle for being the 'za of last resort? No, they did market research to figure out how people really felt about their pizza, and launched a viral video telling people how their product had failed, and what they were doing to rectify it:
Still very corporate, but it's a start. Now they're showing up at the doors of people who complained in the past, offering them a sample, and recording their reactions.
What's innovative about this approach is not the media, but the attitude. Brands have been treated like sacred cows by their owners for years, and in the isolation of the boardroom they got arrogant. But times have changed.
The Bush-era posturing of admitting no wrong is over. With social media levelling the playing field between people, criticism is not something to be ignored, but embraced.
Domino's has gone so far as to embed a live Twitterfeed on their campaign site. As of this writing, it includes a range of comments from "The new dominos pizza crust is crack! So delicious" to "Just had dominos new pizza, tasted like I ate 3 cloves of garlic." and "Dominos new pizza recipe is to dip the entire pizza in butter".
So, do you think a transit system can adopt this kind of gutsy strategy? To say "sorry about the fair hikes/strike/rude driver/crowded busses" or whatever, then engage riders in an ongoing conversation about what's being done to fix the problem?
Over the years, I've met many of the people behind public services at all levels of government, and for all the public cynicism aimed at them, you can always find some who are true believers in the good that they are doing. If the culture of these institutions could just evolve to a position of "we're working for you, and we'll work with you to make this as decent as possible" — instead of having a deathly fear of criticism — I think they could make real progress.
So here's my homework for you: if you know of any other good examples of brands breaking down the walls, admitting fault, and trying to make good in an authentic and transparent way, please either comment here, or on whatever channel you use to access this blog. If all goes well, I'll post video of my presentation in May, so we can all share in the results.
Doing so much social issues marketing work, we use the word "public" quite a bit: "public transit", "Public Safety Canada", "Public Health Agency of Canada", etc. But a certain embarrassing typo has become a curse of our internal written communications. Yes, that's right — it's a missing "L".
The situation got so bad once that we actually received a memo to remove the word "pubic" from our Microsoft Office dictionaries, so that it would always be flagged. This makes legitimate uses of the word in copy somewhat annoying (our healthcare work occasionally involves discussing STIs), but at least we won't be in danger of sending clients an unintentionally naughty message.
At least we're not the only ones. Check out this screen cap of a Google News search:
In case that's too small to read, there are references to "Amherst Pubic Library", "Napa County Pubic Health Division", the line "crime prevention starts with them, the pubic", "several arrests for pubic drunkenness", "a $24.7 million pubic share offering" and Porter Airlines' "initial pubic offering" (my personal favourites), as well as a "framework which will enable us to compete for a wider range of pubic sector research projects". Only the first hit is an accurate use of the word. That's gold, Jerry!
In these days of too much automated proofreading, the embarrassing typo is obviously here to stay.
Besides the other classic of putting too many "T"s in the word "its", what awkward typos trip you up?
What differentiates us from many advertising agencies is that Acart's purpose is not to stimulate excess consumption. As Social Issues Marketing specialists, we often try to get people to consume less, such as when we promote public transit and other sustainable options.
But within the agency, like any business, we face corporate responsibility challenges of our own. That's why we're continually adding to our agency environmental policy, moving towards reusable dishes, cups and glasses for meetings (instead of styrofoam plates, plastic forks, bottles, cans and takeout coffee packaging), installing lower-consumption lighting, and trying to decrease internal printing.
As well, we're looking into enhancing efficiencies, like motion sensors on lights in meeting rooms. Even the traditional use of environmentally-nasty foamcore for presentation boards is on its way out.
With our social marketing background, we realize that policy is not enough; you've got to change attitudes. That's why we formed "Cause Loop", our in-house environmental team that organizes charity and consciousness-raising events such as Stairs for Wheelchairs and our street cleanup.
But the challenge is ongoing. That's why, if you visit Acart, you'll notice all these little signs hanging around to remind ourselves and our clients that more sustainable living is an ongoing commitment.
At Acart, all signs point to positive change. Take it, boys:
This week, one of our favourite and longtime clients, the Canadian Urban Transit Association (CUTA), is being honoured by The International Association of Public Transport (UITP) for CUTA's Youth Summit on Sustainable Urban Transportation. At UITP's 2009 World Congress and Exhibition in Vienna this week, CUTA is being given the UITP Youth Project Award (North American Region), as well as the Best Practices Award. Martin Lajoie, CUTA's Public Affairs Coordinator, is receiving the Best Young Manager Award.
Last month, our client came to us with some photos and other materials about last year's Youth Summit, and asked us to create a compelling introductory video for the Vienna crowd. Some creative editing (by Acart's own CD Redmond), a rockin' soundtrack, and a short round of approvals later, and voilà! A fitting intro for worldwide public transit's Best Young Manager:
CUTA's Youth Summit is an annual grassroots program that brings together young keeners from across Canada to share ideas for positive activism in their communities promoting sustainable transportation. In the past, this has included events such as legally shutting down Bloor Street to cars so that bikes, people, and transit can take over.
The main point of the congress, according to Martin, is that when it comes to solutions to reduce urban traffic and pollution "youth are ahead of the politicians". Hopefully, the elected officials are listening.
Public/Sustainable Transportation is one of our most passionate social issues here at Acart. Congratulations, CUTA!
