Advertising should stimulate debate. Where do you stand?
New Economist poster campaign asks provocative questions that are harder to answer than you think
This week The Economist announced a new campaign, “Where do you stand?” The campaign poses provocative statements on posters: Prisoners should/should not be allowed to vote. Drugs should/should not be legalized. Trading human organs should/should not be allowed.
Each poster includes a few key facts around each issue that make committing a lot harder than you might initially think. For example, in favor of selling human organs it declares:
There is a desperate shortage of organs. Around 1000 people die each year in Britain waiting for a transplant.
In 1988, Iran changed the law to allow people to sell their kidneys. Within three years, the country no longer had a waiting list for kidney transplants.
Banning the sale of organs drives the trade underground. That makes transplants riskier for both donors and recipients.
It then asks you to text your answer to the designated number in return for a free copy of The Economist. Presumably the magazine will aggregate answers and publish results.
In many ways the new campaign is brilliant. It demonstrates the thought provoking nature of The Economist, turns you into a participant rather than a reader, and gets you to actually think in the process.
While the posters primary call to action is to text your answers, it’s also cool that the magazine has created a new Facebook page where the debate can take place on line.
(Note that I have modified this post from the original. When I had initially checked The Economist Facebook page there was no mention of the campaign. Nor did it appear on their site. But shortly after this post went live, suggesting that The Economist had missed an opportunity by not extending the conversation to Facebook and elsewhere, I received a note from Jamie Credland, a marketer for The Economist who corrected me. Gotta love social media.)
For sure this campaign belongs on places like Facebook and Twitter, or even better on Livefyre, where it could benefit from a focused debate. It appears that Jamie and his colleagues get that.
If the initial news announcement in The Guardian is correct, the campaign runs for a mere two weeks. I find that a bit perplexing as it seems this is an idea with a much longer life.
But on the positive side we have a traditional medium and an advertiser that realizes a reader isn’t simply a reader but a participant, content generator and distribution channel. I’m willing to bet that The Economist will see the debate and dialog continue long after the posters come down and that this will not only be the beginning of another great campaign from the magazine that brought us the great red and white posters of the past, it may be something we see copied elsewhere.
So, is this the new advertising? Where do you stand?
Here are some links that I’ve been able to find so far. Perhaps there will be more to come from The Economist and its agency AMV BBDO. If you find out anything else, please share.
The posters in Campaign
Story in The Guardian
The agency behind it: AMV BBDO
Faris’s Blog: Talent Imitates, Genius Steals
Comments
I totally agree with Budd. With more than half dozen major social utility platforms available, why in this world someone @ AMV BBDO wasn't thinking integration?
Great campaign, but not new at all, in my opinion. Which is NOT a ding!
Off to debate a bit on the Economist FB page!
And for the record: No, prisoners should not be allowed to vote, yes organs should be traded, yes drugs should be legalized!
Jeff
There are other pubs and organizations that do this, true. But these are quite provocative topics and well structured arguments in the copy alone. That's what makes this better than most.
They do host these debates on the Economist Web Site. I think they conceived maybe using them as the call to action to get people who are not already reading the Economist a free issue. And the phone number which SMS gives them is more valuable than a twitter of Facebook connection. I agree that they could use Facebook or Twitter easily as other avenues for voting.
http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/174&s...
The debate is always changing. So I would not be surprised if the poster campaign content was from past debates.
Howie:
Thanks. Couldn't find it searching "Where do you stand?" But as you can see The Economist has already responded and alerted me to some of the online dialog. So, you'll note a modified post. Looks like this all works the way it's supposed to.
Great campaign and great discussion points, including geo location enhancement. It would be just as interesting to read others' comments regarding such inflammatory issues. Texting is a one to one dead end. The threaded conversations on Facebook and/or blogs provide the real value. I hope the Guardian knows enough to monitor the web and read this piece.
They have and did. Within minutes, in fact. Turns out I was wrong as they'd yet to officially break everything. You can see changes to post above. All is good. Thanks for stopping by.
Thanks for sharing the insight.
Your suggestion would be a good idea, and deserves to be recommended.
Would have been nice to tie location into the campaign (where do you stand, after all), to show opinion by geography, would be nice to see more attention paid to the FB page, would be nice if we stopped doing things that only lasted a few weeks and vanished (stop building sand castles, please), would be nice to use provocative questions/topics to build a platform for the brand that sustains itself over time ... too bad.
.-= Bud Caddellu00c2u00b4s last blog ..guatamala3.jpg =-.
Bud:
Note that I have modified this post from the original. When I had initially checked The Economist Facebook page there was no mention of the campaign. Nor did it appear on their site. But shortly after this post appeared, suggesting that The Economist had missed an opportunity by not extending the conversation to Facebook and elsewhere, I received a note from Jamie Credland, a marketer for The Economist who corrected me. Gotta love social media.
So there is a Facebook page dedicated to this, and chances are that will extend this from a campaign to a platform.
Note changes in post above.
Interesting questions without opinion generate and create debate. Very good idea from them.
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