Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Hey! Why don't we chose nude kids as key visuals for this product?!

I am currently leading a shorter project that, among other things, involves creation of a series of advertisements for an upcoming campaign. Normally, the lady in charge of branding and marketing communications would be the one developing the ads, but she has been met with some resistance from one of the team members who, for reasons I haven’t really figured out, wants to make the ads himself. This amusing conversation occurred a little earlier:

Branding Lady: (Exhausted after some arguments) Well, Salaryman, I don’t really care that much, they can make the ads themselves if they want to
Salaryman: (Pretending to be a little authoritative) Yeah, but it should at least be approved and go through you since you need to be in charge and have oversight of all our communication
Branding Lady: Yes, I think so, and I want to make sure we don’t get too many paedophiles interested in our campaign too...
Salaryman: (A few seconds of confused silence) What…?

Then I remembered how the company the guy who wanted to design the ads, had done a series of pretty famous advertisements a few years back, which, for no clear or tangible reason (i.e. the product was neither 1. A paediatric product nor 2. A product suitable for use in children, nude or otherwise), had featured naked children and how me and the branding lady had laughed about those bizarre ads… She agreed to make sure she had the last word and control…

As a side-note I always was fascinated by that company and those series of nude children ads since there are so many gates that it must have passed with;

1. An agency suggesting nude children as key visuals

2. An employee thinking it's a great idea for the product even though it has no connection to children or nudity

3. Since the series has been running for several years; people deciding that it's a great campaign that should be continued...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

scorpions CD..

aimlesswanderer said...

I wonder if this guy has some worrying after hours hobbies...

I have heard that the big new source of Yakuza profits is child porn, so they really need to change the law to crack down there.

Mr. Salaryman said...

Anonymous - Well, German Hair-metal bands can hardly be expected to have as sound judgement as multi million dollar coporations...

Aimless - Yeah, it's a bit creepy... To be honest, not sure how the laws look like in that area, but have the feeling that they could benefit from being tightened up a bit (a very uneducated opinon, but still).

aimlesswanderer said...

I would love to hear about what would happen if he went overseas to a job interview, and what the reaction would be when he brought up his famous "naked children" campaign!!! I have doubts that it would be well received.

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of Dakara's "mannekin pis" ads...

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