The genuis of Saatchi and Saatchi, OBV Ad campaign

As a student of advertising, I spend a lot of time looking at, researching, and thinking about ads. And because I one day hope to pursue a career advertising for nonprofits, I find these campaigns the most interesting. I love the challenge. How do you get a message across when you have no money?

While researching possible project topics for a class, I stumbled upon a Saatchi & Saatchi campaign for Operation Black Vote (OBV), a nonprofit dedicated to encouraging minorities to vote.

OBV faced a discouraging problem. In order to address the low voter turnout of minorities in Britain, the group had five days to send a message to get them to register to vote before the deadline.

What’s the fastest way to get publicity? Stir up controversy.

Anyone who has worked in the customer service industry knows that people are far more likely to voice complaints than praise. That means, in order to get the message talked about, it’s gotta incite anger. Nothing gets news outlets, bloggers, and internet commenters more active than when they can get on their high horses about a perceived injustice.

It’s important to also note that the privileged majority claiming to be persecuted is the hottest new trend. Whether complaining about affirmative action, defending against the “war on Christmas,” or advocating against the oppression of white males, some people are just…making asses of themselves. Saatchi & Saatchi and OBV used this to their advantage with their campaign, “don’t take the color out of Britain.”

The internet flooded with angry comments, tweets, and posts about the campaign being racist against white people.

It blows my mind to see how quickly people in the white majority will cry racism and complain about a double standard with regard to race. I guess that’s because they don’t have much else to complain about, since they’re not on the shit end of police brutality or systemic unemployment or, oh yeah, disproportionate representation in government.

The campaign was pretty genius. Throw up an ad that will get a lot of people angry without alienating the target audience. Then let the angry people do the heavy lifting of spreading the campaign.

With coverage on radio, TV, and print, with conversations in news, social media, and blogs, the campaign reached 98 million people. And one million people registered to vote.

Not too bad for a few posters and a guy talking at a camera.

And maybe even one of the people who felt so personally victimized by the ads will have a friend explain the difference between experiencing racial discrimination and acting like an out-of-touch privileged asshole.

Grace- Boston University Student

https://strangeroverblog.wordpress.com/2016/02/04/operation-black-vote/