Thou Shalt Wage Advertising Wars on Buses
Dec 11, 2008
From this washingtonpost.com blog post:
Last month, the American Humanist Association bought $40,000 worth of space on 200 Washington D.C. Metro buses for this ad: "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake." The humanists were copying a similar bus ad campaign by atheists in Britain.
Zing! Although I thought the British version of the bus campaign was funnier.
Not wanting to be left behind, the Center for Family Development, a Catholic-based nonprofit in Maryland, is trying to raise $14,000 to run a bus ad campaign with this message: "Why Believe? Because I created you and I love you, for goodness' sake." The ad includes an image from Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam."
Well touché, Catholics! And nice job on the $26,000 discount you apparently got.
And a group called Pennsylvania Friends of Christ plans to buy ads for 10 Metro buses to send this message into the streets of the nation's capital: "Believe in God. Christ is Christmas for goodness' sake".
OK, now we're just beating a dead horse. But I
think I get the point of this passive-aggressive pile-on. At first
glance, it seems like a logical response: If people are convinced by a
bus sign to become atheists, than a bus sign will probably be enough to
convince them to switch back!
Except, wait a minute—why are we recruiting the kind of people who base their personal philosophies of existence on something they saw on the wall of a bus, anyway? Isn't there a high probability that, once converted, those extremely fickle people will once again vanish because they saw another sign on a different bus telling them to go get a sandwich, so they did that? And then they saw a sign that said to call a mesothelioma lawyer, so they did that too? And then they just completely forgot all about deciding whether to believe in God?
This point is valid in most situations:
"why are we recruiting the kind of people who base their personal philosophies of existence on something they saw on the wall of a bus, anyway?"
However, this is not a commodity one is dealing with; it's a human's soul. If you believe that it's your mission to save souls, even a half-wit's soul is priceless. So you want them regardless of how they come to see the light.
Posted by: Jay | Dec 11, 2008 at 09:10 PM
I simply believe that this is a reinforcement. This haven´t logic that someone going start to believe in he/she can see in an advertisement unless it is a bit stupid. That message becomes a reinforcement for someone who already previously believed. it's like: you're not alone, we are more like you, encourage you.
Posted by: Pablo Gómez Valero | Dec 12, 2008 at 06:20 AM
However, this is not a commodity one is dealing with; it's a human's soul. If you believe that it's your mission to save souls, even a half-wit's soul is priceless.
As someone who is an atheist (I guess that D.C. metro ad worked!), I of course don't get behind the "saving someone's soul" bit. But even if I did, I think I might find the phrase "even a half-wit's soul" a bit, well, offensive. Just sayin'...
Posted by: Whitney G | Jan 09, 2009 at 02:38 AM