Red Cross Advertisements

I want to preface this statement by saying if news organizations can be sensationalists, so can the charities.

That being said, American news outlets are coming under scrutiny for having any embedded journalists in Japan, and relying too heavily on YouTube and Twitter...

And the problem with that, is you have the blind leading the blind. The news outlets aren't even trying to be "objective" any more. However, FOX News and ABC did dedicate substantial portions of their network to following the developments in Japan.

Anyway, this got me thinking about the ads the Red Cross runs. They used to be iconic. In a former life I even worked at an advertising agency that made a few Red Cross ads... they weren't good at all. I remember one that ran, it was a bunch of people in a traffic jam, and some were wrapped in a blanket and were crying. Over this was the song "Everybody Hurts" by REM. Subtle it was not, and I am not sure what message the agency was trying to convey. Oh wait, that was the offiicial video. It completely escapes me what the agency's video was. Talk about a bad message. It conveyed nothing.

I was naive enough to assume all ads for the Red Cross were probably just as vapid, just as safe. And in research, I found that I should revise my stance on the issue. Some were really iconic, art - in the purest sense of the word.

I love when a company has enough sense to re-run some of it's older advertisements. They cut through the clutter better than anything modern, or rehashed. Although, the ads predominantly feature white men, and the ladies as nurses, the same can be said of most portraiture from the Flemish. We know it's a product of the times, and that does not necessarily diminish the message.

I would also like to add, it would be nice to see a medium dealt with as much care as these ads were, with a multicultural, and heterogeneous message.

Submitted for your perusal.


Popular Posts