Vasquez on 12/11/2007 at 06:32
Some years back in Finland there was a campaign for preventing accidents with fireworks in New Year. They used real photographs of exploded eyeballs, cut-off fingers and so on. It caused complaints (because Our little sweetheart would Never get drunk and play with fireworks!) so they didn't do it again. Too bad, I'm sure it had at least some effect. It's strange how you look at things differently, when you know it's real.
But having actors explode, cut themselves or pose in car-wreck positions, that doesn't differ from seeing bloody corpses or severed heads in a movie. It's either splattery gross or comical in a very black way, but nothing more.
mxleader on 12/11/2007 at 07:17
Quote Posted by Mingan
I lol'ed at the exploding welder.
I thought they were all funny, especially the Monty Python style exploding welder. Sure these things are not so funny in real life, but when they are on YouTube...I can't help but laugh my ass off.
D'Juhn Keep on 12/11/2007 at 09:31
Oh my god that was so funny :D
When I did my forklift test we were shown an unintentionally funny video of the "Seven Deadly Sins of Forklifting" including such gems as not waving to co-workers - your arm out of the fork - when your fork is approaching a wall and not reversing off a drop when a truck has pulled away.
D'Arcy on 12/11/2007 at 11:29
That was brilliant!
Thirith on 12/11/2007 at 11:59
I think this is quite a quandary for awareness-raising campaigns. Do a solemn ad campaign, and some people will laugh their heads off at the pofacedness. Do a clever campaign using black humour, and many people will complain that they're cynical and disturbing (in a way that makes people angry, which isn't very constructive). So basically you're going to fail miserably with much of the intended audience. You could also just throw your hands up in despair and not do anything, but that's even worse. So what should you do?
scumble on 12/11/2007 at 13:14
Well scots, I think it all goes awry as most people are just a bit shocked (or surprised) by the advert itself, and then simply forget about it afterwards.
I think Vasquez' example of the fireworks one makes a bit more sense, but again I think the shock is usually linked to the immediate response to the advert, and not the message they are supposed to take away.
I suppose what worries me slightly is that children are going to see these and it will have an adverse effect on them. It's not a problem for me as we haven't been watching TV at home for about 2 years, but for a lot of people who never seem to turn the damn thing off, the audience is unlikely to conform to any intention the designers had in the first place.
Ultimately, I think these "awareness" campaigns are probably a waste of time, due to the reasons raised in this thread.
If there are groups who want to do something about workplace safety, say, they should be more targeted at the people who find themselves in the work situations represented. Maybe the effort with more general things such as fireworks and road safety is more credible, but on the whole the effctiveness of communication is dubious, and it would be very difficult to measure the impact on the problem with any degree of accuracy.
SubJeff on 12/11/2007 at 14:45
There are 2 categories of film here - those aimed at perps and those aimed at bystanders or facilitators. The intention to grab attention clearly works, and even if they help a little they are worth it imho. The Canadian domestic violence ones for example are aimed at getting violent people to seek help for the problem and that's a laudable aim that I'm betting works sometimes. Workplace safety ones seem to be to educate people about what they should expect from employers and that's fine too. People laughing at that Chris Eccs ad just shows either callousness, inability to deal with upsetting things or that the ad has missed the mark and been unintentionally funny. If the advert is right and people still laugh that leaves the first 2 and that's a reflection of how messed up society is, nothing to do with the ads.
Yes, I quite like them. I do think they should have more real incidents on them though because that certainly is more effective. People will still laugh though, people won't care. Certain people enjoy seeing others suffer and we'll never change that. Shouldn't stop us trying to reach people who aren't total arseholes though.
LesserFollies on 12/11/2007 at 15:02
There are a couple of truly (but unintentionally) hilarious anti-marijuana ads currently showing in the US: one in which a couple of guys go to a fast-food place and accidentally mow down a little girl on her bike while exiting because they're so eager to get to the munchies, and one in which a girl's dog starts talking and tells her mournfully that he really wishes she'd stop smoking pot because he misses his old friend. That's just going to make people smoke pot so their dog will talk.
