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.

Marking my spot.

But also, will defend us to the hilt against any expectation that 'we' should be able to 'agree' to a proposal. This is a discussion board, where anyone in the world can come and make comments. There are no mechanisms here to come to any kind of decision as there is no closed membership, no voting procedures, no nothing. 10 people could agree on a thread and then 10 new people join it and have totally opposite views. It's what it says on the tin.

Anyone who suggests that not coming to a decision on this is a failure by 'Mumsnet' is just showing they don't understand new media and social networking, and no-one we know would want to portray themselves as that sort of Luddite, surely?

their response is on the other thread

oh groan which one? Can you link MP

Nice post Workingitout!

Sorry have just used initiative and found it - don't link!

Here it is:

---------
Good morning.

Having followed your discussion and suggestions over the weekend and taking into account Mrs Baldwin's letter, we've decided to do the following.

1. Do an 'anti sexist' poster as some of you have suggested.

2. Give £1000 to a charity. We'll choose one from the charities you have listed.

3. Both OAA and (Beta) will continue to give resource and time to the charities they have existing relationships with.

Thanks for you time over the week end.

Once again apologies for the offence caused last week.

Best.

(Beta.)

Still don't think we should go with donating poster to a charity for all the reasons discussed on the other thread. My only point being that not all contributors to MN have agreed this. I think some of us still think that an overt anti-sexist statement (Sexist ads are a waste of space/ sexism harms us all/ sexism is bad for business)strikes another blow in helping to rid society of something none of us want and certainly don't want our children to have to contend with.

Just out of interest, does anyone know how many users there are of MN? I think I saw the figure 270k on a post somewhere but I thought it was more than that?

GoodEnough - Do you mean unique users or namechanging users.

Members including namechangers, lurkers and teenage boys in the holidays: 120,045,056,743
Unique Members: 272
Unique Members on this thread: 12

270k is apparently the number of registered users. But that will include everyone who ever registered and then wandered off without bothering to find the fairly secret dereg option.

I'd be quite interested to know the number of active users -- which you could define as something like the average number of unique users who post more than (say) 3 times per month.

ooh, am I unique? What a nice thought!

SorryBeta - watching with interest for news on who you gave the £1000 to (and whether it was cash or pro-bono).

Looking forward to seeing your anti-sexist poster also (although I don't think I can bring myself to sign on with BritainThinks.com to look at it, I'm afraid).

You didn't seem to like the idea of ringing round all our charities offering your services though

Do update us when you have time.

Yes please do update us Beta. Most importantly, can you now confirm that all the posters have been removed? They were still everywhere this morning. Lots of people have been moaning about them on twitter btw.

I guess its the OAA not (Beta) who need to action the removal. I saw several very large ones in central London, near girls' schools yesterday. Am giving them till tomorrow to get them down given the weather and will check the same sites on my way to drop my DS at the tube and my DD at her entrance exam before heading to work (see (Beta) that's how we career women juggle things).

If they are up, I will be on the phone to the OAA and the relevant poster companies.

Me too WIOAIG, there's not really a valid excuse for them still being up. If OAA were genuine about removing them ASAP, I'd expect them to come on here and post again if it looked like things were taking longer than they'd like. Clearly they're not that bothered, which makes the apology a bit empty. How disappointing.

well actually it is a bit trickier than that

they will need to print replacements, get the replacements out to the company that pastes the billboards, and persuades the company that pastes the billboards to fit it into their schedule

TBH I think replacement of ANY of them is fairly unlikely - except for the digital ones.

I suggest that we just deface them with a black aerosol instead - I want to see photos of BADASS mother advertisements, comeon laydees

Have lost the plot with all this now.

What is the 'anti-sexist' slogan they are using?

I have lots of black aerosols MP stored for just these sorts of occasions, so am ready and waiting.

I really want to come across one of the posters

If Betaman could tell me the nearest poster site to TA1, I'll happily go and "remove" it for him

here is the billboard for those who haven't seen it

It's just gagging for an ASS

like this?

link takes me to a yahoo log in page, mp

doh

on my profile