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Social advertising is the practice of spreading the word on certain forms of activism. It's messages tries to influence the audience to lean towards "good". That certain social behaviors are more beneficial to the individual and will help them in the long-run. Anti-smoking, obesity, diabetes, are all examples of topics that ads could cover for a campaign on human health. Social advertising isn't limited to health, either. There are a variety of social problems that activists are trying to fix, and they need to promote awareness for these problems. They think advertising is the way to do so.

Unfortunately, they're half right. In most cases, these social ads tend to stick to an average person for a while, before they forget. They can't influence change in a society for long-term conditions, but work well in short-term situations.

Here are some examples of ads that I believe that are successful in short term advertising to a population:

Social Issue

​Advertising

​This is an advertisement for the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature). The lack of words are intended so people can focus on the wild cats, rather than the message.

While the relationship between both animals is unknown, you can see that the smaller one is tagging along with the bigger cat. The size tags on their backs suggest their inevitable deaths because of their valuable skins. The ad wants the viewer to feel sympathetic towards these animals, in an attempt to get you to potentially stop purchasing animal skins.

 

The ad isn't directed at any country specifically. Poaching is a big problem for animal rights activist, regardless of region. I believe that the ad did have the potential to be powerful, but the impact of these messages don't tend to stick to a person's mind for long.

​I personally like this ad. It's very aggressive with its target audience. This campaign was intended to be used as a wake-up call for many parents about childhood obesity. The reactions were not positive, the people of Atlanta requested that these ads be removed because of their offensive message.

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From my perspective, the message was so strong, that it caused many parents to go into denial. This campaign had potential for getting into people's heads. Unfortunately, Atlanta isn't ready for

straight-to-the-point advertising.

While the message was done with good intentions, many angry moms started blogging about the negative impact that this will have on their kids. Their arguments consisted of having proof that "negative" messages like these would actually increase the amount of food children eat. Somewhere a long the lines they would mention that ads like these would cause emotional eating, and while that isn't completely false, the argument itself adds to the amount of indecisiveness in this small community.

 

This campaign ended pretty brutally. The endless waves of angry parents misinterpreted the ad, which was directed at them instead of their children. Some of the feedback from them includes the campaign being called "abusive". Strong4Life changed their website design shortly after the end of the campaign, instead of trying to wake up parents, they decided to change their presentation with healthy, happy, motivated children with smiles one their faces.

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