Give Adweek credit. While American media commentators have been screaming since Fox News ran scary headlines about a mosque planned on Manhattan's "hallowed ground," Adweek posed a simple question: How could ad agencies convince the U.S. public that not all the world's 1.5 billion Muslims are terrorists? Adweek created a brief to "change the perceptions of ordinary Americans toward Islam and Muslims, and encourage dialog between those who oppose and support the building of the community center."
The submissions are all persuasive, with New York-based agency Gotham striking the most provocative tone. We all live at Ground Zero, Gotham suggests. So, where would you allow a mosque? Love it or hate it, Gotham brings the argument to its most logical conclusion: if our country embraces xenophobia, there is no room for those who are different anywhere.
3 comments:
Ballsy campaign.
More to the point, superb idea by Adweek to try and change this perception.
I must admit, when I first heard about the planned mosque, I remember thinking "Come on guys, why make it difficult. Rightly or wrongly, why shit on the sensitivities of others?"
The Gotham ad is so powerful because it is so damn logical. It raises the question, "If not there, then where?"
Unfortunately, the shrieking shrills of Fox are unlikely to see it that way, but it can give the rest of us pause to think about the issue more deeply.
I must admit half the time the prime Advertising Trade Pubs don't do that great a job with covering news or have poor journalism. But the other half of the time they do stellar work, which is why I allow the gazillion emails come to me each day.
I did not know this was done by Ad Week and I am looking forward to checking it out. I think it's an awesome idea they pursued.
On the topic of Terrorism. I actually laugh at how dumb the terrorists really are. What would make this country shit a brick more...bomb in a NYC Subway? or a suicide bomber at a Perkins Restaurant in a small town?
Brilliant on multiple fronts. Great concept that gets reader to think. Two, reminder that advertising type creative, a single image and headline, are as powerful as an editorial or journalism, and perhaps even more so because they actual drive user involvement, if only the mind and thought process of one reader at at time.
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