Controversial UK Ads Out To Prove Something [Updated]

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A two-week ‘Britain Thinks’ ad campaign, led by UK’s Outdoor Advertising Association has daringly put up controversial messages on buses, billboards and posters across the country. Some of the messages include “Career women make bad mothers” and “1966. It won’t happen this year”, referring to England’s chance of winning the world cup in South Africa this year.

These messages aim to convert traffic to its microsite , Britainthinks.com, a place for the British public to rant, share and comment on issues.

According to Alan James, the chief executive of the OAA, this campaign is out to prove that outdoor advertising has the ability to drive people online. I must say it is a pretty creative effort by Garry Lace and Robert Campbell’s agency, Beta.

Via brandrepublic

Update

Ha! OAA has proven that outdoor advertising is indeed able to generate a response from audiences. However, I am not too sure if it’s the way they expected. It is withdrawing the controversial billboard ad that read “Career women make bad mothers” in reaction to a hullabaloo from working mothers.

An influential forum, Mumsnet has witnessed many of its members’ discontentment, and even anger with the billboard.

A member wrote:

“WTF is a “career” woman?

As far as I can see it’s a pejorative term in itself that sneers at women’s aspirations to have interesting jobs that matter to them, whether or not they have children.

I’ve never heard of a “career man” so I don’t recognise the existence of the “career woman”, the whole notion is insulting and demeaning.”

Justine Roberts, co-founder and managing director of Mumsnet, said:

“Mumsnetters thought the campaign to be ill-conceived, crass and stupid and the reaction on Mumsnet was a mixture of annoyance, contempt and despair in fairly equal measure.”

Response from the strategy head of Beta, Sharon Johnson:

“There has been a misunderstanding with an important mothers’ forum about this campaign which is about sparking a debate. It is not what the campaign thinks. But rather than offend people the decision has been taken to replace the posters saying ‘Working women make bad mothers’ with other slogans which work just as effectively.”

I have to say OAA has been deeply misunderstood. It is merely displaying controversial statements that are often made about certain issues. The messages do not represent their views and stand. If you disagree with them, voice it out nicely like what others did. Attack the message, not the campaign (or the people who created it).

Beta has apologized for offending working mothers out there:

WE’RE SORRY.

Robert and I would like to apologise to anyone we’ve offended with one of the posters we created for the OAA.

The reason we’ve waited until now to apologise is that the strength and nature of the reaction to the poster, specifically on mumsnet, shocked us. At first we were not sure what to do.

It had not been our intention to cause such offence, nor to attract such abuse.

Our intention was to provoke discussion. We believed that both the poster and the content of the Britainthinks website reflected this. We accept we got this wrong.

It has been suggested that we are about to commence legal proceedings against mumsnet. This is categorically not the case.

We have asked that they operate within their own editorial guidelines which they now are doing.

We are profoundly sorry. We hope our apology is accepted.

Garry and Robert.

Source: guardian.co.uk