No sex please, we're Calgarians

Have you seen the Virgin Mobile bus shelter campaign showing people making out with male and female angels?



Apparently, they're too hot for Calgary Transit.

According to CTV:

"Calgary Transit says it received several complaints that the ads were too sexual and were close to areas where children could easily view them."

Heaven forbid kids see a couple making out in a bus shelter. (Considering Calgary's significant hooker problems, we're lucky if that's all they see!)

Mississauga has also pulled the ads, for basically the same reasons.

Chris Baines, spokesperson for Virgin Mobile is unapologetic:

“We’re very proud of our ads. We don’t think there’s anything wrong with them. They are just young couples passionately embracing or kissing. It’s no more than that and they’re a lot of fun.”

An ad featuring this couple was allowed to stay up, because it has less groping.

Meanwhile, in the Toronto market, and in the replacement ad for the two yoinked ads in Mississauga, the angels go both ways.



One can only imagine why that one wasn't chosen for the Calgary market.

In defence of nothing

The National Post reports that Mississauga City Councillor Carolyn Parrish has declared war on the "overuse" of colour and whitespace in city print ads, challenging Mississauga's communication people to reduce their ad budget by 30%.

Now, I'm all for being efficient, and I appreciate the Councillor's push to get her city's communications into the modern digital world. But the insistence that municipal ads are "too large, utilize too much blank space or have too many colorized features" is something I have heard many times before. And it's a mistake.

Smart use of whitespace (or "negative space") is an important technique used to get print ads noticed, especially when they're floating in a text-heavy page of editorial.




For example, this sentence, with no other art direction to help it, stands out.




Unfortunately, though, many clients look at their media spending, and dislike the idea of paying for several column inches of nothing. And you end up with a mess like this:



Instead of a show-stopper, like this:



Restrained use of colour highlights can also be effective:



So, if there's one thing I'd like to say to people like Councillor Parrish, it's give your print ads a break. They need all the help they can get.