F'd Ad Fridays: Purity Panties

Not so much an ad, as a marketing idea: underwear for teenage girls that will protect their honour by shaming any boy who comes in contact with them to back off.

You thought I was joking?

This is the offering put forward by "What Would Your Mother Do?"

"Having high schoolers of our own, we realize that at one point or another, teenagers are going to want to date. We've decided there's no reason to get uptight about it, after all, finding a romantic partner is a normal and healthy part of adolescent life. But, why not help our teens make wise choices (whatever that may be for them) while they navigate the dating scene? We created a line of underwear to use as conversation starters to help reinforce family morals as they relate to relationships and dating. One part Victorian (who are we kidding?), three parts frisky, these adorable undies put new meaning to saying it loud and proud."

A mixed message to young girls that they should look and feel "grown up" sexy, but still follow "family morals"? I guess it's par for the course these days.

Via Adrants.

Don't believe everything you read

The Daily Mail  reports one of the most obvious stories imaginable: that kids will believe anything they see.

Donald Leu, a researcher from the New Literacies Research Lab the University of Connecticut, told a group of American students (age not given) to read about the "endangered Pacific Northwest tree octopus" online.

They were directed to this site:

The kids bought it. Leu says that even when they were told the site was fake, the students refused to believe they had been had.

"Most students simply have very little in the way of critical evaluation skills," said Dr.Leu. "They may tell you they don’t believe everything they read on the Internet, but they do. It's a cause for serious concern.

"Anyone can publish anything on the Internet, and today’s students are not prepared to critically evaluate the information they find there."

This study bothers me for a couple of reasons.

First of all, as far as I can tell the kids were told to go to the site by someone in authority. That means they were lead on under a sort of institutional credibility. Why shouldn't they believe what they are told at school? Skeptical students are often treated like behaviour problems. Just ask my genius big brother.

Second, why should they think a tree octopus is preposterous? Maybe they had seen one before, in the speculative documentary The Future is Wild.



This show has real scientists talking about conceivable future creatures, as they are rendered in fairly realistic CG. My son loves it.

And believing everything you see on the internet is hardly a generational thing. Has Leu never visited Snopes Urban legends Reference Pages? Cryptozoology sites? Free Republic? Answers in Genesis?

Yes, children need to be taught to be more skeptical and critical of media. But so does everyone else, of any age.

Besides which, this message has already been delivered in a far better way. With House Hippos.

My other bus is a streetcar

Toronto media planner fail:



For those of you outside of our fair country, Canada's largest city (and advertising epicentre) of Toronto has streetcars. They're rather cute.

However, when creating and placing a national campaign, you may wish to consider that none of the rest of Canada's five largest municipalities has streetcars. (Okay, Vancouver's getting surface light rail, but I'm not sure that counts.)

What's extra-specially sad about this placement, which I shot this morning, is that Ottawa is hosting the Canadian Urban Transit Association's 2010 national conference at the moment.

I wonder how many delegates now wonder why CMA can't tell a streetcar from a bus?

Somebody needs to tell their agency's creative and media teams to get out more.

G to the C-dot

If you want to know just how dependent Canadian media are on government social marketing, check this out:

A big drop in government advertising helped pull down radio advertising by 13.9% in the third quarter, according to Canadian Broadcast Sales, which represents more than 60% of all private radio revenues.

Spending from all government sources dropped 54%, while federal government spending was down 61% in the quarter—Ottawa’s cuts alone accounted for more than one-quarter of the total decline, according to CBS.

Yikes! This is my bread-and-butter we're talking about here! You can't even blame the bandwagon move to social media on this one, because government regulations severely inhibit its presence on Web 2.0 (although my loyal readers will already know how to deal with that!)

In 2006-2007 (the last reporting period published) the Government of Canada spent $71,224,000 on advertising campaigns. If this seems like a lot, consider that most advertising money (the rule of thumb is 80% in the private sector) goes into media buys. The GoC, which is required by its own regulations to reach people equally in two languages, all over Canada, requires even more elaborate media buys.

I'm sure there are lots of people out there who think this money is wasted. But as someone in the trenches, post-Gomery, I can tell you that this is not a sector that will make you rich. Rather, government advertising has become as driven by ROI (even if the "R" is awareness or attitudes) as any other type. Intensifying competition is driving down professional fees. And the accountability for agencies is iron clad.

Also, most government advertising is in the public service: programs and information that can improve your quality of life, or someone else's. In the past year, I've worked on campaigns to help people be prepared for civic emergencies, to ensure the safety out their food supply, to protect themselves against swine flu, and to be aware and speak out against elder abuse, to name just a few. As we say at Acart, it's "Work that matters"...

So here's my modest proposal: If we're going to spend government money on industries in trouble, don't reduce advertising spending. Canada's communication and advertising industry worth $15 billion annually, according to ICA, and it's an industry of creative innovation that feeds intellectual property into our knowledge economy daily. Plus, of course, the media spending on all those obscure regional publication will keep up the diversity of regional voices that make our country so interesting. Not to mention all the spin-off work that keeps Montreal's, Toronto's, and Vancouver's film industry and actors' unions alive.

We're still doing fine here at our shop, but I worry about what it will mean to our industry as a whole if government social marketing spending gets slashed further in a recession that has seen a huge decline in many of the major industrial clients.