OAA Apologise for "Career Women Make Bad Mothers" Campaign

[OAA]

The OAA are running a campaign to demonstrate the power of outdoor advertising to drive people online. This is being done in conjunction with a new website called ?Britainthinks.com? which encourages debate amongst the people of Britain.

We regret any misunderstanding that led to feelings of offence on the part of members of the Mumsnet community.

The intention of the website is to generate debate by posing questions that are deemed to be socially relevant by members of society.

We did not intend to cause any offence and we would stress that the questions posed were not the opinions of the OAA or any of its members.

Three posters were designed to initiate the debate using sport, life and politics and these are supported by dozens of other questions on the website itself.

Regrettably the question relating to ?career women? has caused offence and the OAA unreservedly apologises to anyone who has been offended. This was not our intention and, to ensure that this misunderstanding does not persist, instructions have been given to remove this poster.

Subject to the vagaries of the weather, all copy will be removed as soon as possible. The sites currently carrying this poster will be either blanked-out or carry one of the other designs. The poster will also be removed from the ?Britainthinks.com? website. All Digital posters have already been removed.

I totally agree with MrsB and crazycatlady.

Its Friday night. Let's just leave it and put it to bed. On Monday it becomes old news.

Apologies have been said. We all have our opinion on Garry and BETA, we don't need/have to carry this on any further.

They need to save themselves, we don't.

I had never heard of OAA before this thread so well done OAA you have really delivered on your "campaign to demonstrate the power of outdoor advertising to drive people online". At least with me.

I may be cynical but I think they knew EXACTLY what they were doing when they launched this campaign. I can almost hear the planning meeting 'uhm...which community can we offend without getting arrested who have a high media profile and a growing online presence...uhm.....mothers..uhm WORKING MOTHERS....Let's offend mumsnet'

But junk the objective of their campaign was to drive the debate to their website, which didn't happen.

Like bluesky says, by Monday this will be old news... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

unlessthereisanymorenonsenseaboutcollaberatingwithHWMNBN

but that's a tweak or two, the point is that it did get noticed. in some ways it is a success, surely? huge furore delivered, massive coverage.

Their stated obective was to use poster adverts to drive people to THEIR 'portal' (oohgling presumably ,as Lenin pointed out, the URL is small!!) They made a loud noise about it and Garry L is promoted in all their PR. What actually happened is they lost control - the debate was on MN and other blogs and Twitter . Now they want some control back. IMO nice try Garry's gang - but no!

Does anyone still really feel like collaboration is the way forward? Or is it a definite, thanks but no thanks?

When Justine said:

"....We take your point about playing into (Beta)'s hands SnowWorm et al but from our perspective we'd rather that than an ongoing battle....."

• it gave me the definite impression that she either feels or knows that there will be an ongoing battle if we don't cooperate with this digital poster.

I really hope that this isn't the case, but if it is, then I, for one, would not want Mumsnet to be involved with this poster - we shouldn't give in to explicit or implicit bullying.

I'm loving this - snorted hot chocolate out of my nose when I saw the evil pet picture. Wasn't a good look for me.

Why not have Garrrrry/Whoever come up with their own slogan that says "we were arses when we picked on working mums, and our own kids probably don't recognise us because we're never there"??

Or would that be a bad idea?

Okay, work's over for the week. I have about ten minutes before I have to go do something, so here goes. My ten pence worths of views without poetry:

One of the key skills in being a good advertiser is the ability to understand the audience and provoke emotion in them - so in that respect you did a bang up job

However, when you look at the influence of your audience you want to only make the influencers feel positive towards your message or product.

It's fine if most people just go 'meh' because you'll probably have a hardcore of 10% who feel very strongly about your ad. But, if you hack off people who influence and who go ahead and share their views, you've got a problem.

Without wishing to imply any form of veiled threat, I find it difficult to understand why you would effectively attempt to censor free debate on this subject in such a direct way. All this does is forces people to move the debate to a more unmoderated medium (ie where you can't find it) and no, you won't find it by Googling either. You need to credit us with at least as much intelligence as you credit yourselves.

A dignified silence would have killed this in three days. The ads were a mistake, okay, we all mess up. If you'd withdrawn them, quietly, this would have gone away almost instantly. Sure we would have had a little crow of victory - well hey you can understand that right?

Instead you've made international news. And I do think in this case 'all publicity is not actually good publicity' because it's made your lapse in judgement in posting such a (IMHO) heinous ad, very, very public.

Which was a bit silly really.

Now I've just checked with my legal counsel - who is sitting right next to me eating crisps and making a mess on my sofa and nothing I've said here can be construed as abusive or personal. So I don't expect you'll be trying to pull it with Justine - she's gonna get RSI on the clicky finger at this rate

I don't think a compensation ad is the answer, I think you should (in the nicest possible way) go away, lick your wounds and think of something new. I could suggest something but I doubt (sincerely) that you would accept a decent slogan from me because you appear to find my posts threatening in some way. Which is a shame, I'm actually pretty darn good at copywriting apparently though it's not my job anymore!

On further reflection (and a couple of glasses of vino with Tech, the original, who's visiting from America) I'm favouring something along the lines of:

Attention seeking ads are puerile
or
Sexist ads are a waste of space

Think it's actually the only way to do this and not to be a sell out.

Agreed. But with or without MN branding?

(sorry can't be arsed to namechange back)

Even without, it will be a huge industry story. This thread will be trawled, and a spin put on it ( see various posts above)

Now get off the 'puter and enjoy more vino with Tech

Without is better I think, no?
Do you think (Beta) will be up for it?

Oh definately without. It will still be known why that particular poster has come about, and while I'm not 100% about it, I agree with your decision

Pretty sure they will be up for it with endorsement/logo or not. Even without, as I said before it will be known why that partic slogan has appeared, the story as you can imagine will be all over Campaign etc pretty sharp.

So in their eyes no one loses - and they have much to gain (as do MNHQ, publicity wise). The risk is being seen as a pawn in a PR exercise, even though it befits us

Did you mean 'befits us' or 'benefits us' MummyPigLive? Both might work, I suppose.

I'm glad you are going to say no MN branding Justine. That just makes it a slogan they read on MN, rather than a seedy collaboration. And the whole MN story is going to become part of their campaign anyway, regardless of whether you give them a slogan.

Don't do it. Its like selling our soul to the proverbial. Let them sort out their own mess.

And if you do any kind of endorsement interviews, quotes for their site or whatever you could mention that only about a dozen or so (or thereabouts?) MNers got involved with making up a slogan, so it isn't really an 'MN' slogan at all.

Surely MN has enough influence to negotiate our own ads at amazing rates if we really wanted them.

IMHO a dignified thanks but no thanks is the way to go.

They are going to put up some kind of slogan that is much more agreeable anyway so why bother getting involved.

Yeh I like that idea "Sexist ads are a waste of space"

Makes the point and will be better than anything of their own choosing unless they are suddenly taken over by the Fawcett Society

(Much love to Original Tech - we miss you! although obviously we do love the New And Lemon Scented techs too. XXX)

MrsBaldwin is enjoying the Times this morning

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6981570.ece

That's a great article, well done Jack Malvern

Fab article, he's clearly paid attention to the subtleties of the situation. Hurrah for Jack.

Great article.