Via the Globe and Mail: In the battle against H1N1, these ads are different strains. Excerpt:
It's like something out of a horror film. A man, coughing and sneezing from the flu, leaves a trail of grimy green fingerprints behind him as he makes his way home from the office.
The fingerprints – a bit of poetic filmmaking licence used to illustrate live flu germs – appear on the stop button of his bus and on the front door of his house.
Then, after the sickly fellow arrives home and turns off the TV with a remote control, his young son picks up the device, turns the TV back on and – in horrifying slow motion – places a germ-riddled thumb into his tiny mouth.
The creepy moment is from an ad that hit airwaves this week in Britain, where the Department of Health is in the midst of rolling out its mass media campaign to raise awareness of the H1N1 virus, one of many such government efforts around the northern hemisphere to combat the infectious disease.
Most global campaigns – say, for movies, music releases, or software launches – are driven centrally by a single corporation. But the approaches to combatting H1N1 are as varied as the territories themselves.
And while the aim of most marketing is to sell a product, ad industry executives admit that changing human behaviour – vital in fighting disease – through conventional advertising presents a far tougher challenge.Not long ago I saw a story (wish I'd linked to it) about the problems of getting guys in men's rooms to wash their hands. Apparently one sign did have some effect: "Soap it off or eat it later."
