Agency: Jung von Matt Zurich, Switzerland
The placement of the above anti-obesity ad – on the seats of swings in a children’s playground – is wholly inappropriate. Even if obesity is a problem amongst children, the last thing in the world you should be doing is putting signs where they play that say, in effect, ‘you are fat’. Eating disorders, after all, run both ways, effect girls and boys differently, and on the whole, with respect to children especially, are the effect of targeted media messages not unlike this one.
While adults may read that sign as a simple encouragement to a healthy diet, who’s to say what a child’s idea of obesity really is? Will children confuse this message with mass media representations of healthy bodies as overweight? Will every child who reads this feel that they’re the one out of five that’s obese? And why are children the target, in the first place? Shouldn’t the parents, who are responsible for their children’s diets, be the ones targeted?
And why put an anti-obesity ad on, of all things, a playground, the very place where children are actually exercising?
“This whole set-up allowed them to communicate their message in an interactive way, inviting children to become aware of the obesity issue while playing, and at the same time inviting their parents to deal with the problem as well.”
(h/t directdaily)
