Advertising Agency: TBWARAAD Abu Dhabi
Creative Director: Martin Lever
Art Director/Illustrator: Sherif Galal
Copywriters: Martin Lever, Farrukh Naeem
Via: MediaME.com
We now reach the conundrum that surfaces when worldly events make a good ad campaign obsolete. Here’s the deal in this campaign: the photos are designed to show how a gruesome and stupid social problem like domestic violence can be so torturously subtle. And they do that well, good job TBWA.
The problem here is, these ads were uploaded in March. A rather funny thing’s happened since: a few top Muslim scholars and Sheikhs in Egypt, Saudi Arabia (!) and Turkey have stood up in the summer and said that if a wife is assaulted by her husband, she’s got a right to fight back. A very positive step in Arab culture I feel, but it ruins the point this campaign wanted to make.
Why am I so sure of that? Because if I were a woman now in the Middle East, and am getting hit by my husband, then I see an ad for a place called the City of Hope, I wouldn’t be thinking that they’re there to give me solace or peace of mind or whatever; I’d be thinking that they supply a rather crude (yet stylish) assortment of blunt(ish) objects that can be ‘utilized’ upon my misdirected man. Oh I wouldn’t use them to hurt him, Allah forbid – they’d merely aid my cause as I very calmly explain the errors in the notion that violence is an exclusively male pastime, and proceed to advise hubby that by understanding my perfectly logical point he’d avoid several inconveniences in his short-term life… such as having to eat through a straw, forcing oneself to sleep on one’s back, and screaming forever more at the sight of a bottle of Pepsi (those last two are linked, think about it…).
So maybe the ad hasn’t become obsolete; perhaps it’s the City itself. But don’t worry boys, I’ve given you the perfect deviation in merchandise which will help you maintain your noble cause and, more importantly, stay in business! You can thank me later :)..