Some emotive topics are always difficult for marketers. It can be a challenge to present a creative idea that is sensitive to the issue while being confronting enough to make a difference - all while keeping an audience engaged without promoting the wrong response.
On Sunday, Shelley and I were driving back home down the Parramatta Road when a billboard caught my eye. The creative was a striking photographic image of two male faces - one caucasian in appearance and one indigenous. The headline above read "Which of these men is unemployed?" In the few seconds I had as our car zoomed past, I looked for the tagline that would complete the message and provide the necessary context. Who's campaign was this? What was the answer to the question? More importantly, what idea or action was I supposed to take away from the sign?
In the bottom right corner of the billboard, away from the road and barely visible from the car, was a single line in a small white font.
For the rest of the journey home, I found myself wondering what I had just missed, but also - more importantly - which marketing genius thought a person in a moving car with approximately three to five seconds of reading time (if you are lucky) could read a tiny line of text that seemed to have been placed more for the convenience of the pigeons on the surrounding roof tops.
I was so incensed by this complete billboard failure, I performed a Google search for the headline phrase - and up popped the campaign. Turns out the tiny tagline read "We're hoping you couldn't answer that," followed by the website address reconciliation.org.au. I couldn't find an image of the 'unemployed' campaign to illustrate here, but another in the series suffers from the same problem, reproduced below.
Before I continue, I need to point out that I fully support the aims of this campaign, designed to promote Reconciliation Week 2009. There is still a deep divide between new and indigenous Australians and campaigns like this one are terribly important in moving community attitudes to a more harmonious society.
But the noble aims of a campaign brief shouldn't protect a campaign from criticism when it drops the ball as badly as I think this one did.
Epic billboard fail
The obvious problem with the creative design for this campaign is that the closing argument is completely lost and unreadable on most roadside billboards - leaving the confronting question in the viewer's mind without the context or clarification needed. How many people would see the question and the faces and leap to the very thought the campaign is trying to argue against without ever being confronted with the point of the campaign? Remember, a campaign like this isn't about preaching to the converted - those of us who get the point without the clarification. There is no value in getting those of us without prejudice to agree that prejudice is bad. The target audience are those people who do make snap judgments based on skin colour or background - the very people most likely to reach the wrong conclusion without the benefit of the tagline.
I don't know how many of these billboards are out there. The campaign has a series of such images (presumably on billboards) and is backing it up with a website and online resources. Whether all the billboard placements are equally as bad or whether a better position makes the tagline clearly visible I can't comment on - but in designing a billboard and buying roadside placements, the agency responsible has overestimated the ability of motorists to engage with their content.
The effect is that the billboard can actually create and promote prejudiced thoughts rather than exposing and reducing them.
Offending you for your own good!
Another confronting advert that used shock tactics to attempt to change perceptions is currently available at www.antiprejudice.net. This entry into The Gruen Transfer pitch segment - where two agencies create competing adverts to fit an unlikely or ridiculous brief - was censored from broadcast by the ABC on the grounds that it may offend some viewers. This particular brief was to create pride amongst overweight people and end shape discrimination. Whereas the first ad took a humorous angle - as most pitch entries do - the second, by The Foundry Agency, took a particularly serious and confronting approach to the issue of shape discrimination. Thankfully, the producers placed the advert - and the ensuing panel discussion which is highly worth watching - on the net for interested viewers to make up their own mind on a sticky topic.
Warning: may offend.
I'm not going to discuss whether the ABC should have censored the advert or not. That topic has been ably discussed elsewhere on blogs including Mumbrella and Media Hunter. What I do want to use this advert to illustrate is how using prejudice to fight prejudice can seriously backfire. Whether I think this advert works or not is immaterial. The issue is whether it would work with the target audience - and that I have a problem with.
Many commentators believe this is an effective advert and have defended it from claims that it misses the mark. But, as Todd Sampson on the panel pointed out, this campaign also risks losing the audience by offending them so strongly before they reach the all-important tagline. How many people would be so offended by the first few jokes that they would either have switched over or plunged into a rage before the final line is thrown to give it all context? How many of those viewers who actually do tell those sorts of jokes (and they are definitely out there) would actually see this as a source of new material for down the pub, furthering prejudice against other highly sensitive targets instead of lessening it against overweight people? How many people will really equate a 'fat chick' joke with the others and how many will see them as inherently different? The first three jokes do far more than insult a minority group; the 'fat chick' joke doesn't advocate violence or genocide against overweight people. Can a joke about beer goggles really be held in the same class of offense as a joke about the Holocaust?
Shock value can be a powerful tool to get a point across but there are other factors to consider. There is a crucial element missing in deciding the success or failure of an advert like this - placement. Who is the audience for this advert? How do you find the audience who a) won't be offended by the previous jokes so greatly that they miss the final issue and b) are offended enough by the first three jokes to see the irony in the fourth? It's a very fine line to draw between failure on one side and actually causing the offense the ad seeks to lessen on the other. Just maybe the right ad placement could find that line. Maybe the right placement was as a discussion point on The Gruen Factor and would achieve it's best cut through by being discussed in this way across the web.
In the real world, campaigns like this don't have the luxury of The Gruen Transfer to close the concept circle for the audience. The agency behind the Reconciliation advert don't have the opportunity to come into my living room and explain how the billboard was put together and how I really should interpret the campaign.
In both cases, these campaigns designed to reduce prejudice, risk inflaming just that by placing the most controversial message up front and burying the true message in small type or in the final frame. One buried the message through poor billboard placement and terrible font size - the other buried the message (ironically) by pushing the prejudice issue too hard so that it overwhelms the viewer. The anti-prejudice message is simply not delivered with anything approaching the same punch and power as the offensive discrimination message.
That can only be classed an epic fail.
