Advertising That Speaks to Advertisers
One of the great pitfalls of advertising is creating ads that speak to the organization doing the advertising rather than the audience that they’re trying to reach. I’ve seen it at tech companies: the ads that everybody internally thought were cool and neat, talking about the features that we loves but the customer didn’t necessarily care much about - at least not enough for them to be the main point of ad.
It’s a mistake that’s made over and over again, and an example of it turned up recently: Stonewall, a UK group that advocates for the rights of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people, put 600 billboards up all across Britain for two weeks with this message:
As I read about it, I thought, “Okay, who are they talking to here?” If someone objects to laws protecting the rights of gay people in Britain, it’s likely that this objection stems from cultural or religious beliefs, and a likely response to “get over it!” is “no, I am not getting over my beliefs about what’s right, and stop badgering me about it.”
On the other hand, Stonewall’s constituents - gay and lesbian Britons - probably liked the billboards. When you feel like the world misunderstands you and often tries to hold you back, saying “Would you just get over it!” can be powerfully cathartic.
But what you like hearing is often not what you need to be saying to others.
Crafting those kinds of social change messages is, of course, very challenging; I don’t have some alternate suggestion for Stonewall’s billbaords that will do the trick. In fact, I would question whether billboards are a particularly effective way to reach to people on this topic.
But I could imagine something a bit softer that might provoke some thinking about the subject. For example: “Every gay person is somebody’s kid.” Or, “There are gay people right here in ____” (fill in the name of the place where the billboard appears.
Those are just some ideas off the top of my head. More importantly, though, I wonder if anybody from Stonewall has tried to figure out what they accomplished with the campaign. Did they change many minds? Did they make anybody friendlier toward the gay and lesbian people around them? It would be nice if they did… but I doubt it.
(Via FH Out Front Blog.)
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John,
I loved it - but then I’m not the target audience - to your point.
Smacking people with snark isn’t going to get them to change their minds.
You could also do a series of “Normal people” photos
Fireman rushing into a building with a bit of text ending with “He’s gay.”
Doctor operating - “she’s a lesbian”
A father helping a little girl balance a bike. “He’s gay.”
An couple of adorable really old ladies (or men)
And so on.
Oh, my first reaction was “Yeah!” But I don’t need convincing…
As with all political movements, there’s a fair amount of pleasing the check-writing constituents that goes on, and I think that’s what is happening here. It’s not that it’s a bad campaign, I just really wonder how well the money was used.
As is so often the case with advertising!
Mary, I really like YOUR campaign idea. Unfortunately, it probably doesn’t fulfill the apparent “in your face” requirement for so much of today’s work.
John, excellent post. As for “pleasing the check-writing constituents” you may have a point, but I think presenting gays as normal people in heroic to quietly noble situations, per Mary’s thought, would serve both purposes well. And that’s from a “creative guy” who normally reserves his highest praise for his own work. (Pretend there’s a smile face here — I just can’t bring myself to do it!)