Fastest way to kill an advertising campaign? Insult mothers.
By: Mark Winter
In a recent effort to show the effectiveness of outdoor advertising, the Outdoor Advertising Association (OAA) launched a campaign in London aimed at working mothers. Not smart.
The campaign featured large signs on buses and buildings that read, “Career women make bad mothers.”
The idea was to get attention and it did. In an extremely negative way. Angry mothers took to the Internet posting their thoughts all over the place and killed the campaign immediately.
The OAA dropped the campaign, which was supposed to run for 14 days, and issued an apology.
Now you could consider this in two ways: Did the OAA achieve their goal by proving the ads were effective and would get people’s attention? Sure. Was there a genius behind the plan that thought targeting working moms would get MORE companies to invest in this kind of ad buy with such negative messaging?
Success? Somehow I doubt it.
