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.

bullying is a MN term for 'somebody doing something I don't like' thus largely meaningless.

I've been thinking about the slogan they'll use.

It's going to be something which "cleverly subverts sexism by turning it on its head", isn't it?

I'm offering 8 to 1 on it not mentioning the f word.

I had a quick scoot over to netmums to see what their take was on all this, but couldn't see it being debated anywhere, which surprised me a bit. I wonder if it's been debated by any of the other parenting sites?

It just struck me this morning that MrsBaldwin's successful stance against Beta reminded me a bit of the 'X-Factor versus Rage Against the Machine' thing, in that a social networking platform has been used successfully to disrupt something sewn together by commercial media.

So Garry Lace's offer is a bit like it would be if Simon Cowell offered the RATM people a spot in next year's X-Factor -- with a song they could have called Rage on Behalf of the Machine'

I'm glad things have worked out the way they did. I think.

LeninGrad - I am beginning to understand why you aren't a copywriter.

BIWI - just googled. Seems as though it's a hot topic in East Dulwich. Interesting post by Huguenot.

Good Bill Hicks link on that forum.

LeninGrad - I think it needs tweaking.

I would like it mentioned for the record the beta did not consider our proposal in the invitation for donating to charity at all, and did not response to it other than dismissing it out of hand many posts ago.

Jump and how high, indeed.

Lenin

Zeph - thanks for those links. V interesting.

Zeph thanks for the Link. Is Dulwich Ms B our MrsB??

Agree about Huguenot's post. Interesting insider's perspective on the economics and motivations of the outside advertising industry.

But he seems 'old school' marketing and makes no account for Beta's stated aim to prove outside ads can drive cutomer's to a specific online site.

you would think it would be relevant that they direct traffic to a particular site, but maybe not? i suppose what we should be campaigning for is some legislation to prevent incitement of gender hatred or somesuch.

It is interesting, this desire of the ad campaign to pull people from one advertising medium to another (outside to online). There has been a very good TV ad recently, which I think is an advert for TV advertising in the same way that the Beta thing was an advert for outdoor advertising. It quotes from lots of TV ads and then encourages you to go to a website called Thinkbox -- to go from TV to online, presumably to make the poin to TV advertisers that it is easy to pull people between media.

The very strange thing about the Beta campaign, as others have said, is that their own online site that they wanted us to go to was very poorly signalled in the ads and is not easily found via google.

Please someone confirm that this is a piss take

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/891786-We-39-ve-decided-on-our-slogan-in-apology

HB - clearly a pisstake, but good for a laugh on a dank Monday!

SnowWorm - was just thinking this. When I googled the infamous slogan, their website didn't appear anywhere at all. Which makes me wonder (like Aitch) whether traffic on that site is particularly relevant to them. Perhaps they are simply measuring their success by the volume of general hubbub generated. Gah.

Snow - The 'oohgling' thingy is the point, I think. The weakness of a outside ad is you don't time to write down a url and can't be bothered to remember them. But if you are prompted (by clever copy ) to google the strap line, you also boost the company's google rating!!

Alternatively - that is just their cover for a cunning plan to do somthing else of course... (jack hastily runs to keep up).

Clearly the only response is to stay very very quiet and do nothing at all. Anything we do or say will be taken down and used as evidence of campaign success. Shhh! Step away from the internet, lock all your doors. The admen are here.

I have been wondering that for a while...I think I'll have a lurk on a MIL or bumsex thread - they'll never find me there!! (or will they??).