February 3, 2012
Ready for the Super Bowl?
I sure am. Football, food, and awesome commercials? Count me in!
If you’re lucky enough to score a ticket this year, be sure to pay special attention to the screens surrounding the stadium. Our friends at Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) secured placements for four of our Gay and Lesbian Bullying Prevention PSAs: “Fitting Room,” “Cashier”, “Pizza Shop”, and “Wordplay” featuring Hillary Duff, Wanda Sykes, Grant Hill, and Jared Dudley.
When it comes to gaining visibility for your public service advertising campaign, we learned that you don’t have to be on the Super Bowl to be at the Super Bowl.
But when you receive an awesome opportunity like this, what do you do with it? You blog, tweet and send out a press release. Just being at the Super Bowl is news. Especially when you’ve got the word “gay” attached to anything (sponsor, issue, copy).
And remember – before you say “that play was so gay”, remember that using “gay” to mean “dumb” or “stupid’ is hurtful and offensive.
December 9, 2011
An Interview with Lily: Sesame Street’s Food Insecure Muppet
Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind Sesame Street, is once again setting a great example of how to tackle a difficult subject in an approachable and unique way. As part of their Food for Thought initiative, the organization is bringing the important issue of childhood hunger to light with the introduction of a new Muppet, Lily. And I got the chance to interview her.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1 in 4 American children are food insecure (a.k.a. hungry) and 9.6 million of them are under the age of 6.
“In that Sesame Workshop model, we looked at how you structure a story around this issue in a way that presents the child’s point of view,” said Dr. Jeanette Betancourt, Senior Vice President for Outreach and Educational Practices at Sesame Workshop. “We figured the best way was to create a wonderful Muppet who had experienced food insecurity so that we could really point it out from a child’s perspective.”
Enter Lily. A 7-year-old Muppet who knows all too well what it feels like to be hungry.
Abigail Quesinberry: Hi, Lily! It’s so nice to meet you! So, Lily, I understand that your family hasn’t always had enough food to eat. What’s it like to not know where your next meal is coming from?
Lily: Well, um, that’s kind of a hard question… My mom is really good about doing the best she can and my dad… I guess he’s been a little mopey lately. I try not to think about it too much. But I’m pretty lucky because there’s this thing at school where I get a free breakfast and lunch. Before that, it was really hard… my friends would go sit together at lunchtime and I would say I wasn’t hungry or I had a stomachache or something because I just was a little embarrassed, you know, or ashamed about it.
Filed under: Communications, Content Production
Tags: changing behavior, Food Insecure Muppet, Lily, Sesame Street
July 5, 2011
Motivating the Motivated
The purpose of public service advertising is, in a nutshell, to motivate. The very talented and driven people I work with spend all day and frequently most of the evening trying to do just that. But there’s a common misconception that once our target is motivated, the advertising has done its job and mission accomplished! At the Ad Council we know that a motivated target can make the biggest impact in their community and inspire those more hardened to traditional public service advertising. That’s why Amanda Bagwill, a campaign manager, and I flew to Chicago for the annual Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) Conference.
For any “normal” high school student our workshop on starting an Anti-Texting While Driving grassroots campaign would be met with blank stares and an air of palpable invincibility. Not so with these superhuman catalysts of positive change! We were dealing with a whole new breed of highly motivated and passionate individuals who chant their hometown like NFL football players at dinner (which, if you’re not expecting it, can be pretty startling). The workshop was a total hit (the evaluations prove it) and we had created 30 passenger seat riding, phone swatting ambassadors.
Filed under: Communications
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