Invitation to Beta ad agency/OAA to donate poster space to charity

[mrsbaldwin]

Dear Beta

On Friday afternoon you offered contributors to Mumsnet the opportunity to create a poster as part of the OAA?s current outdoors-to-online BritainThinks ad campaign.

This was by way of apology for offence caused by the campaign?s career women ads.

You said:
*the poster could be on a topic of the Mumsnet community?s choice
*that it would go up on digital ad sites around the UK (although you would confirm the exact numbers and locations of these later)
*that it must be co-branded BritainThinks (and conform with the various rules and regulations of poster advertising)
*that there would also be a donation of £1000 to a charity of Mumsnet contributors? choice

You suggested various potential slogans and asked us to get back to you (by Monday morning).

Contributors to Mumsnet have debated your offer, here:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/888789-OAA-Apologise-for-quot-Career-Women-Make-Bad-Mothers-quot

They thank you for your offer (and commend your efforts at damage-limitation).

Following their discussion, they have decided that they would like to donate your offer to a worthy charity. The thread linked above suggests a number of possibles, as you will see when you read it.

As you ring round these charities, in the early part of this week, to offer them free, co-branded BritainThinks ad space and a £1000 donation, you may not suggest you are calling on behalf of contributors to Mumsnet or working in partnership with contributors to Mumsnet. However, you will want, for their information, to direct them to the debates on this site or, for brevity, the recent items in the Guardian, Times, Independent and New York Times linked here:
www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/08/career-women-advert-outrage
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6981570.ece [[http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/comment ators/susie-rushton-enjoy-the-travel-chaos-while-it-lasts-1861199.html (scroll to bottom of page)
www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/09/world/AP-EU-Britain-Offended-Mothers.html

We are aware that the poster industry and the ad industry already donate space and their time, pro-bono, to charity. Here is an opportunity to add to your good work.

We?d be very pleased to receive a progress update when you are ready to make one.

Thanks very much.

SydneyS - deadline, teehee.

Good work MrsB. Now let's see what happens...

MrsBaldwin, I salute you

go go go MrsBaldwin.

marking

Marking my place too.

They aren't going to do this

They just want a slogan to replace the one they are removing from the digital boards

and no charity's media team will come up with a slogan in one hour on a monday morning

they will just run with their own slogan adn tell everyone they consulted us but even after 1000 posts, we couldn't make a decision

I think MP is right. I also think they weren't setting a deadline for fun - it just fitted with their normal operating process. I wonder what they will go with. I hope it's something like all parents work - would be good to have a debate about the value we put on the work of sahp as well as that of wohps.

That MN users (all 270k of them) couldn't agree to and define an ad campaign over the weekend on a chat thread? It was a ridiculous 'offer' on their part. Delete it, then they can't spin it.

I think TBH that MNHQ need to sift through the thread and go with the response they think is right - no disrespect to MrsB but I think the final arbiter should be MNHQ

Then we can all kick them and say "You were going to do that anyway, why bother pretending that you care WAAAAH" and things will return to normal

MP - they can tell everyone they consulted us re a new slogan if they like - it's here in black and white for the whole world to see that MN contributors are charitably minded

IMO no-one should feel gloomy about spin, for lots of reasons. Back later.

Great letter MrsB. This is the right decision.

But people like STORIES MrsB, nice concise stories

At the mo the story is: "Whining mums kicked up a fuss"

If we take the approach you suggest it will be: "Whining mums kicked up a fuss and then couldn't decide on an alternative ad despite three days of consultation"

If we suggest a slogan then THAT wiill be the story

We (well, MrsB) have put together a very coherent response though morningpaper. A preferred approach is very clearly outlined in MrsB's letter.

I think the preferred approach (as always) is pretty much split 50/50

They aren't the advertisers - they are the agency, the advertisers have asked them to come up with another slogan, that's all. They can't say "Our new slogan is: Give these boards to charity" because they will say, erm, no dear, we gave 1.2 billion boards to charity last year, we just want a nice slogan which will take one money 20 seconds to replace on all the digital billboards"

This was my viewpoint yesterday, it's still my viewpoint today...

"If we really want to change sexism in advertising, how is it ok to collude with the perpetrators or even assist them vaguely with sorting out the mess?

So they can say to trade media and potential new clients, 'well yes we started the campaign with a contentious, attention grabbing, seemingly sexist slogan but we did something really groundbreaking in working with the UK's most influential parenting forum to come up with something that really challenged viewpoints and got to the heart of the debate. In fact, it was our most successful campaign ever blah blah blah' ..."

This is why MrsB's letter is such a sensible response. It also shows that we thought carefully about how to act and came up with an appropriate and measured response.

Am too tired to argue the point any more.

Mp it's far from 50:50. The consensus is as stated in MrsB's letter.

The story, mp, is that we debated their offer and then made our own offer to them.

In other words, we did it on our terms, not theirs.

I have no interest in falling back into the advertising world's 'Jump! How high?" mentality. I did that for long enough!

If they don't give the space to charity, the story is:

Women wanted to donate this space to charity. The admen said no.

Five minutes to go ....

I've lost interest.

No not really, but must do some work. Any news from Beta, what's the end result now?