the very compelling p.s.a. video that was the focus of
my advertising industry-related blog post of July 10th,
TAC-SWAP -which I've gotten a lot of positive
email about, esp. from overseas visitors to
Hallandale Beach Blog- has, for now at least,
been rendered invisible on YouTube as a result of
a copyright claim by the very people in Australia
whom you'd think would want the message they
paid for to be seen by as many people as possible,
the Transportation Accident Commission.
You don't have to have read every one of world-renown
Northwestern marketing professor Philip Kotler's
many great books on marketing strategies, or sat in
on his Kellogg classes in Evanston, to know what
a very bad decision that will likely turn out to be in
retrospect.
http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/bio/Kotler.htm
http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/Faculty/Blogroll/All-Blogs.aspx
http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/Faculty/Books_By_Faculty/Marketing.aspx
Looking northeast towards the main part of
Northwestern's campus and Lake Michigan.
Until you've been there, you can't imagine
how beautiful the Evanston campus is.
It's not quite in IU's class in terms of beauty,
but it's much beter than 95% of this country's
college campuses.
Here they have precisely the sort of great interest
in their awareness campaign that you'd want, and
they not only don't have a means for sharing it
from their own website, but they've actually now
clamped down on the one-and-only way most people
will ever hear about it, including similarly-situated
groups around the world, who, it might be hoped,
might get the kick-in-the-pants they need to start
being as realistic and compelling on their home
turf as this and the preceding TAC ads have been.
(To see previous Grey Melbourne advertising
and marketing campaigns, go to
http://www.coloribus.com/adsarchive/search/?q=Grey%20Melbourne )
Just imagine if overnight, Miami-Dade County and
Broward County governments were forced to pay for
ads on local TV this realistic, to induce citizens to
call anonymously to report govt. graft and abuse,
kick-backs, contract chicanery or ethical funny
business by elected officials or govt. employees?
That would be great to see on TV, and the sort of thing
that the Broward County Ethics Commission
really ought to be pushing hard, if you ask me.
http://www.broward.org/ethicscommission/welcome.htm
So, with all that said, here is the only legally-sanctioned
website where you can actually see the SWAP p.s.a.,
although a few places around the world still have it up
until the Australians force them to pull it down
-like at Sostav in Moscow,
http://www.sostav.ru/news/2009/07/10/cod3/ -
albeit without the benefit of a large screen.
To see the campaign:
http://www.tac.vic.gov.au/jsp/content/NavigationController.do?areaID=23&tierID=1&navID=63CC12CD7F00000101A5D19311EC6AC2&navLink=null&pageID=1847
Kudos to the people at Grey Melbourne who made
this great ad possible, which hasn't gone un-noticed:
creative director Nigel Dawson;
executive creative director Ant Shannon;
writer Nigel Dawson;
art director Pete Becker;
agency producer Jess Smith,
account director Claudia McInerney,
TV Director Sean Meehan,
film company Soma Films;
client Emma Mulholland and John Thompson;
Media Mitchells.
