Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Fight Mannequinism or When PSAs Just Don't Work

A while ago, I heard a PSA on the radio telling me to fight mannequinism. This is a new condition caused by not volunteering and not being politically active.

A testimonial is given by a young-ish sounding male voiceover that says something to the effect of "I started noticing hard plastic on my shoulder."

Apparently, this is geared to young people to make them more politically active and engage them in more volunteer activities.

I applaud the Ad council for its efforts. The PSA is clever and provocative, but not really partisan. I would suggest however, that the Ad council fix the website. As of post time, the domain name in the PSA goes to a linux test page.

I think that the problem is the marketing is too over the heads of its target audience. For one thing, I'm a 31 year old college graduate, and I had to look up how to spell "mannequin."

On a related note, Cracked.com has an uproarious take on the world's most disturbing PSAs. There are several which are gut busters, but there are some that will undoubtedly make you squirm. Be warned.

1 comment:

David said...

I just heard this PSA in the last couple of weeks. I had no idea it's been around this long.