February 25, 2011
Glee Blames It On the Alcohol – Underage Drinking Prevention on the small screen
By Alanna Strauss and Nirmal Deshpande/Ad Council
Despite their good looks and homes they could never afford in the real world, TV characters face real issues and often offer guidance and support to viewers. And I’m not just talking about Tony Soprano and Donald Draper; I’m talking about everyone from Naomi Clark on the recently revived “90210” to Jason Stackhouse on “True Blood.”
“Glee” often touches on the issues facing high school students today: bullying, insecurity, heartbreak, competition, peer pressure and as seen in last night’s episode, underage drinking. This was “Glee’s” opportunity to take advantage of their large, loyal audience and offer a voice of wisdom on what motivates teens to drink and the consequences that follow. Ultimately, the episode sent a redeeming message to teens experimenting with alcohol. Moreover, the alcohol culture portrayed in the episode highlighted several key issues to consider when communicating about underage drinking prevention.
MYTH 1: Throwing parties makes you cool. One epic party can take you from zero to hero on the high school social scale.
Glee TRUTH: Rachel wasn’t any cooler after the party. She didn’t gain new respect and is still unlucky in love.
MYTH 2: Drinking makes you more outgoing, and often more attractive to others due to liquor’s secret yet potent ingredient – “social lubrication.”
GLEE TRUTH: As Finn wisely explains to Rachel there are 4 archetypes of the drunks: 1) The weepy, hysterical drunk; 2) The Needy Drunk; 3) The Angry Drunk; 4) The Happy Drunk; and 5) The Girl Who Turns Into A Stripper Drunk. None of them looked cool – all of them made fools of themselves. We couldn’t wait for them to sober up.
MYTH 3: Beyond hangovers, potential vomiting, and the embarrassment that follows asking “what did I do last night?” there are no serious or long term consequence
Glee TRUTH: For all the lessons the episode provided, this was its weakest. The club got off pretty easy after their performance. We know the show doesn’t have the time to incorporate detention or suspension into their plotline (regionals are just weeks away after all), but we wish they could have been a little more realistic about some of the more significant consequences underage drinking.
Filed under: Communications
January 20, 2011
Youth Sports Injury – What Every Parent Needs to Know
Even if you don’t follow sports, you’ve probably heard about the onslaught of injuries plaguing NFL players over the last season. In October, Eric LeGrand, a Rutgers University defensive lineman, was paralyzed after a devastating hit. This past weekend, John Carlson and Marcus Trufant of the Seattle Seahawks both left the game due to head injuries in the Divisional Round of the NFC Playoffs. These injuries are a huge problem and the NFL and NCAA are now revising its rules to do something about it.
But what you may not have heard about is the alarming rate of sports injuries among children. According to the National Institutes of Health, approximately 38 million children and adolescents participate in organized sports in the U.S. and about 1-in-10 receives medical treatment for a sports injury.
The folks at Safe Kids Worldwide, a nonprofit dedicated to preventing unintentional childhood injuries, are well aware of this disturbing trend. They’re concerned that parents see injuries as “just part of the game” and are unaware of the risks of overuse, dehydration, heat-related illness, and concussions.
It’s a tough communications challenge. By now—thanks to the long-term efforts of groups like Safe Kids—common injuries among kids like burns, pedestrian accidents, drownings and car accidents are on the decline. But sports injuries are a quiet, yet looming, issue that most parents are simply not fully aware of.
In my opinion, the competition over participation endorsement by coaches and parents has facilitated the sustenance of injury among children playing sports. Thus, kids overlook their injuries and hold back communication with their parents, coaches, or doctors.
How can we get children’s sports back into the mindset that it is all about the participation and that the competitive nature is only a small part of the game?
Filed under: Communications
Tags: changing behavior
January 7, 2011
Stretching your Dollar with Tangled and Curious George
If you’re working with a shoestring communications budget, how can you possibly compete in such a rapidly changing media landscape? Especially when even a million dollar budget barely scratches the surface? Welcome to the challenge many nonprofits face…
With a tight budget, here’s what we did with the Library of Congress for our “Lifelong Literacy” campaign. We leveraged partnerships, existing resources and made the most of online engagement.
First, some background–the goal of the campaign is to inspire kids (between the ages of eight and 12) to develop a lifelong love of reading. The impetus behind the campaign is simple. Children who are avid readers early in life are better learners. And the most avid readers develop a passion for reading at an early age, often because they found a book that appealed especially to them — that excited or moved them in a deeply personal way. Luckily today, kids can access literature through e-books, blogs, websites, magazines, and comic books, not to mention traditional bound books. The format doesn’t matter – what matters is that the child is engaged in reading.
So, we decided to go where the kids are and formed some innovative partnerships. The Lifelong Literacy campaign was able to stretch its dollars because of relationships with larger media companies like Disney and NBC Universal who lent their iconic brands and incredible reach. Through these relationships, we were able to feature characters like Tangled’s Princess Rapunzel and Curious George and books like the Chronicles of Narnia in our campaign materials, which are instantly recognizable to our target audience. And they’re also popular with our friends in the media—who doesn’t have a soft spot for Curious George? In fact, the Curious George PSAs were such a hit that the New York Times featured a story for their In Advertising column highlighting the campaign. Sure, not every nonprofit has access to these kinds of relationships, but it isn’t necessarily the size or name of a partner that matters most. Most important is determining what catches the attention of your target audience and how to turn that into fun and engaging campaign elements in a space where the audience will be most likely to find them.
Filed under: Campaigns, Communications
Tags: Campaigns, changing behavior, Curious George, Partnerships, Tangled
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