Lenticular Photo Used To Secretly Convey Hot Line Number To Abused Kids

http://www.diyphotography.net/lenticular-photo-used-secretly-convey-hot-line-number-abused-kids

by scholia • 13 years ago

424 140 13 years ago

braum• 13 years ago

not much of a secret anymore...

sukuriant7• 13 years ago

True; but, if they can do it with this image, they can do it with hundreds of other images. It makes me very happy to see an old tech used in a potentially very, very helpful light; and not just a gimmick for movie box art

gwern• 13 years ago

99.99% of the adult population will never ever hear about this. I think the secret is safe.

coldtea• 13 years ago

For the HN and tech blogs crowd no. For 99.999% of the population who will never hear about this, or will forget it in a split second, yes.

It's amazing how many people have been busted doing stuff that is general knowledge for decades, but still didn't occur to them that it can betray them.

throwaway1980• 13 years ago

The supposed reason for this is that the abuser won't be able to tell what the kid is looking at. If it's unsafe for a kid to look at such an ad with the abuser around, how is the kid supposed to know that the abuser can't see what he's reading and possibly copying down?

dmazin• 13 years ago

The goal is for the abuser to not know the child saw the information; it's irrelevant whether the child knows whether the abuser saw or not.

stormbrew2• 13 years ago

Would the kid benefit any more by the ad not being there or by not using this technique to make it only visible to the kid?

Any kid scared enough to scrub having seen it from their own mind would not be well served by any version of this. The hope would be that some kids will see the number, remember it, and then call it later.

Samuel_Michon• 13 years ago

But then, why limit it to kids who are 4'4"? Aren’t shorter and taller kids being abused? If it’s a numbers game, shouldn’t you want to cast the net as wide as possible?

dagw• 13 years ago

The supposed reason is to do something neat that creates press and gets people to talk about child abuse. This has been all over the news and nobody who sees the ad is going to be ignorant of who it works. Genuine subterfuge was never the intention.

chiaro• 13 years ago

I believe it's more to do with establishing a secret or 'exclusive' mode of contact between the hotline and the child. I imagine a large (possibly the biggest hurdle) about getting kids to phone when they need to is to make them feel safe from their abuser finding out. Establishing that safety off the bat is important - the communication is in confidence.

lenazegher• 13 years ago

I guess this is kind of interesting, but it also seems a lot like fluff.

loupeabody• 13 years ago

I'm curious to know if this ad actually resulted in more child abusers being reported.

sukuriant7• 13 years ago

Or /will/ result. Getting the kids to a phone will probably be the hard part. I hope they figure out a way to handle that.

sgdesign• 13 years ago

My first impression is that this is a particularly stupid idea. It will probably result in lot of kids not seeing the number because they're a little too short or a little too tall for their age.

afterburner2• 13 years ago

But some will.

Interesting idea, I guess it's so the abusing adult doesn't hastily pull the kid away from memorizing the number?

sgrove• 13 years ago

It seems to be a novel approach, certainly worth the experimentation. Calling it stupid is going far overboard without intimate knowledge of their expectations and motivations.

muyuu• 13 years ago

Better than nothing at all.

markdown• 13 years ago

Then put another one on the opposite wall showing the number to everyone. Problem solved.

pseudonym2• 13 years ago

For one, there is no "too short" for this particular type of display. It's an under-over type of thing.

For two, they're explicitly taking the 'average height of a 10 year old' for this. You would write off the entire ad as pointless because, as implied by the very definition of "average", 50% of 10 year olds and a smaller percentage of each age below 10 would be unable to see it?

Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater...

mcintyre1994• 13 years ago

That criticism sounds valid to me. That's a lot of children, and it's not like 10 is some sort of cut off point for anything.

downandout• 13 years ago

It has interesting mainstream applications for in-store advertising. You can tout the benefits of a product meant for children to an adult and appeal to the child at the same time.

danielharan• 13 years ago

If word ever gets out, that's a potential PR nightmare for those making the ad.

batgaijin• 13 years ago

Remember, whining in the car works best

brandan3• 13 years ago

Bad news for tall kids.

Spectral• 13 years ago

This isn't "bad news" for tall kids. Essentially nothing has changed for them overall, they wouldn't see this message anyways. This is just possibly good news for the demographic of medium/short kids who may have the chance of seeing this, which is the whole purpose of this campaign.

hawkw3• 13 years ago

I think this is a pretty common problem, people failing to realize that good news for one demographic isn't necessarily bad news for another.

brandan3• 13 years ago

that's a really impressive argument!

konstruktor• 13 years ago

A user recently pointed out that the most important advertising festival is coming up (http://www.canneslions.com/) and that agencies are doing campaigns just to enter the race for awards, which seems to be relevant here. See also http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57581882-71/microsoft-turn...

stbullard• 13 years ago

The impracticality of this ad doesn't mean it's just Lion bait.

Some ads are made solely to win awards, and are utterly impractical, but the converse doesn't hold: not all impractical ads are made solely for awards shows.

In this case, the impractical presentation is driving a conversation, which is itself increasing awareness of the issue and the phone number, 116-111. That's a good ad at work: not necessarily at the obvious level - people seeing it on a Spanish street - but nonetheless creating outsize value for the client.

sukuriant7• 13 years ago

Maybe I'm too serious about this; but a couple of the kinds of responses in this thread really irk me.

1) "not good enough". Yeah, but it's better than nothing; and if it can protect one kid from an abusive situation, or one set of kids from their abusive situations, then that is wonderful.

2) "lol, sucks to be [insert random demographic]". Yes, because child abuse is funny </sarcasm>. No, it really isn't. It's not funny at all. The person that's supposed to be watching after you is your greatest danger. It's like cyber-bullying and regular-bullying except with your parent. It's even harder to escape that.

hashmymustache2• 13 years ago

I can understand that concern, but I think people might be reacting out of recognition that this is more an advertising stunt than an informed strategy at addressing child abuse.

Either way these tactics speak to a failing system in not approaching students where they are away from their abuser - school.

While the ad has great intent, it simplifies the issue a bit by implying that kids aren't calling in abuse because they can't find the number.

jonahx• 13 years ago

>> While the ad has great intent, it simplifies the issue a bit by implying that kids aren't calling in abuse because they can't find the number.

This a thousand times. It feels like something the scientist on the Simpsons invented -- very clever but utterly missing the point. I would be shocked if even a single child uses the poster as they're imagining it will be used.

SoftwareMaven2• 13 years ago

Maybe we should take all kids away from their parents and let the state raise them. After all, that will certainly protect one kid from an abusive situation, so it is wonderful. <sarcasm, obviously />

I don't have a strong opinion on the advertisement, but I do have a strong opinion about the "do anything to protect one X" where X is used more for special interests than out of actual concern for X.

Things should be thought of in terms of cost-benefit. Otherwise, you wind up with crap like the TSA, where far more people are dying from driving due to not flying because of horrible TSA policies than the TSA is saving from terrorist attacks.

So, on the advertisement, it is a good thing to cause emotional distress to all the kids who aren't being abused and who have no idea that kind of thing exists?

(And, fwiw, I take this topic very seriously. I have four kids myself and was abused growing up. It is not just an academic, somebody-else's-kids topic to me.)

EDIT: Oh, and I completely agree with your second point. Child abuse is an amazingly serious topic. There are few things worse than the person whom you are supposed to trust most and who is supposed to care most for you violating that trust.

sukuriant7• 13 years ago

> I don't have a strong opinion on the advertisement, but I do have a strong opinion about the "do anything to protect one X" where X is used more for special interests than out of actual concern for X.

If I came off as encouraging that sort of argument, I am very sorry. That was not my intent even a little, and it's certainly not what I believe.

> So, on the advertisement, it is a good thing to cause emotional distress to all the kids who aren't being abused and who have no idea that kind of thing exists?

This is a rough thing to answer. I would ask if the kids really are experiencing emotional distress from seeing those pictures. They might, they might not; though, now that you've brought this method into question, I'm now torn on this whole issue, especially since that the conversation of "why is that boy hurt?" / "He doesn't look hurt to me, dear" conversation is a plausible one; and, to be honest, I don't have an answer yet. I do think that both the adult and children's version of the image talks about child abuse, so that might make the conversation easier.

Again, if my previous post engendered the "do anything to protect the X" stance, I wholeheartedly apologize; and if possible, please let me know what I said that made you think I was taking that stance, since I don't want to be confused there. (emphasis on the anything part, because that's where the danger of doing too much/fixing the wrong thing/harming more than good/etc problems come in)

Yver• 13 years ago

It's a very interesting idea, but in the end it's a moderately-sized number that's light gray over a dark gray background... It seems hard enough to read that the kid would have to stare at the ad.

mikeash3• 13 years ago

The whole point is that it's OK for the kid to stare at the ad, because from the vantage of a normal-sized adult, it doesn't look like it's anything related to child abuse.

gburt• 13 years ago

Except it's just the phone number and quote that are hidden from adults. There's a message at the top about child abuse and a picture of an abused kid that everyone sees.

meraku• 13 years ago

The sad thing about this is that we're probably going to start seeing this form of advertising being used to specifically target kids with marketing messages, where the parent (or adult) looking at the same sign will be oblivious to what is happening.

darkarmani• 13 years ago

Joe Camel is really going to start advertising cigarettes to kids now. The "high" ad is a no smoking ad and the "low" add is joe camel getting kids to try smoking.

onan_barbarian2• 13 years ago

No, thank you. I know abused kids are a serious issue, but the vast majority of kids aren't abused, and this is a disturbing ad to show specifically to a kid, especially when the grown-up with them doesn't see it.

I'm picturing walking past this billboard with my kid and having him ask "Daddy, why does that kid look all beat up" and answering "no, that kid looks perfectly normal, you're making it up". Nice.

There are far better ways to have a very high-quality 2-way covert channel to any kid old enough to read an ad and act on the information here, namely: school. Many teachers are extremely pro-active about figuring out signs of abuse. My mother was a teacher and intervened decisively and successfully in a serious ongoing physical abuse situation once.

Plus, the idea that you might care about kids at school and find out what's up with them is a good precedent that can lead to a lot of other nice related things even when there isn't abuse. On the other hand, lenticular ads that show different things to adults and kids is not a good precedent, whether it's used to show grosser ads to grownups than we currently have to see already ("hey, the kids can't see this") or to covertly market to kids.

nness• 13 years ago

Really, what is wrong with providing more than one way to reach out to abused children?

kevinpet• 13 years ago

As the parent points out, what's potentially wrong with this method is the absence of cost benefit-analysis based on what value this will provide vs. any negative effects this will have (in addition to the actual cost).

Your argument is an instance of "we should do something; this is something; therefor we should do it."

hashmymustache2• 13 years ago

Agreed. You want kids to see this and not adults? then give them a freaking flyer at school or actually address it in class by giving them opportunities to come forward and hire proper guidance counselers who know their way around this psychological minefield.

sukuriant7• 13 years ago

> I'm picturing walking past this billboard with my kid and having him ask "Daddy, why does that kid look all beat up" and answering "no, that kid looks perfectly normal, you're making it up". Nice.

Wow. I hadn't thought of that at all. That is absolutely terrible. Maybe there should be a disclaimer on the ad for the kid about how parents and kids see 2 different things on the billboard?

And yeah, good teachers will take note of that and take care of it; though it can make for some really rough beginnings:

"Hey, Jacob, why are you wearing make-up?" the teacher inquires, noticing that there's a really bad makeup job on one of her male student's faces, around their eye.

"Eh, it's nothing, I just thought it'd be fun, to!" the kid nervously responds regarding.

Falling32• 13 years ago

I think the disclaimer would defeat the whole purpose of the ad.

vacri4• 13 years ago

Lenticular displays look a bit funny to begin with. If someone draws your attention to it, you'll notice something's up, then start moving your head around to figure it out. It's not like this would cause a traumatic misunderstanding between child and parent.

afterburner2• 13 years ago

Oh, I didn't realize the bruises and blood were also only on the lower view. Well, that's a little creepy.

hatfieej• 13 years ago

I would hope that most teachers are proactive about this. But I can tell you from working with some of the poorer schools, it can be a different world that what you are used to. Some teachers seemed to be apathetic and not very concerned about the students. I wouldn't trust that these schools could be left with taking care of the problem. Hopefully, I'm mistaken.

japhyr• 13 years ago

You are not mistaken at all. Schools are one part of a system that should identify and help abused children, but schools can not be the only safety net for children.

mattdeboard2• 13 years ago

> "Daddy, why does that kid look all beat up"

An abused child would never, ever ask that question. Ever.

Millennium• 13 years ago

No, but that's not the only problematic scenario. A child who isn't being abused might still see the signs in one of their friends, and you'd want them to speak up about it. Talks like the one mentioned in the grandparent post discourage that.

onan_barbarian2• 13 years ago

Erm, this was something I was picturing my (not abused, in case it needs to be stated) younger son asking him upon seeing this, so I'm not sure what your point might be in connection to what I wrote.

rdtsc• 13 years ago

> I'm picturing walking past this billboard with my kid and having him ask "Daddy, why does that kid look all beat up" and answering "no, that kid looks perfectly normal, you're making it up". Nice.

Wow, good observation. I hope those companies that market toys and other crap for children don't start adopting this.

nitrogen2• 13 years ago

I'm picturing walking past this billboard with my kid and having him ask "Daddy, why does that kid look all beat up" and answering "no, that kid looks perfectly normal, you're making it up". Nice.

Is telling a kid they're making something up without investigating the best way to instill confidence?

goblin89• 13 years ago

> I'm picturing walking past this billboard with my kid and having him ask "Daddy, why does that kid look all beat up" and answering "no, that kid looks perfectly normal, you're making it up". Nice.

I'm picturing that in such a peculiar case the parent would bend to level their head with the child's.

btilly6• 13 years ago

I am sad that this is the top comment. Estimates vary, but something likely over 10% of the population has been abused. That's a lot. That's a lot of kids that are going through schools and being missed right now. It is wonderful that your mother caught one, but she missed dozens more. That's not an effective approach.

Doubly so when kids tend to think that schools work hand in hand with parents. Your expectation is that anything you tell the school, goes home. Even if they say it won't. Adults lie. Abused kids don't have a lot of trust. Anonymity makes a big difference.

Also there are worse things in the world than having to have that discussion with your kid. Like not wanting to stay home when you're sick because you're afraid that you'll wind up with a sore ass from your mother's boyfriend.

What? You think that is an unfair thing for me to say? Well I've got worse for you. I don't have to imagine that - I just have to remember.

If a billboard like this helps one kid like I was, and disturbs a hundred like yours, that's a worthwhile tradeoff in my books. Before leaping to disagree, stop and think about the fact that the typical estimate is that equivalent experiences are the reality of childhood for 20% of women and 5% of men. That's a lot of kids. It is wonderful that your kids get better. But far too many don't.

And no, schools are not an effective answer to this problem. Ideas like this one might not be either, but it is worth trying them so that we can see how well they work. Because until you try them, you can't find out if they might.

Orva• 13 years ago

> Doubly so when kids tend to think that schools work hand in hand with parents. Your expectation is that anything you tell the school, goes home. Even if they say it won't. Adults lie. Abused kids don't have a lot of trust. Anonymity makes a big difference.

And lets not forget about shame. Even adults have problem talking about abuse to someone they know because of stigma, for kids this is even worse. There is stigma with added fear of physical punishment far worse what has happened so far.. Anonymity indeed makes BIG difference: most likely it is difference between getting help at all or not.

I find it ridiculous that some consider this kind of picture "disturbing to their children" when they don't probably even blink when passing even more brutal/disturbing movie ad or when they let their kids watch those movies.

faboo• 13 years ago

> Also there are worse things in the world than having to have that discussion with your kid.

The rest of your post is totally valid, but I think the above is a big take-away for those of us who don't abuse our kids. Parenting is in large part discussion, and some of the more important discussions are about uncomfortable things.

run4yourlives7• 13 years ago

I thought the parent comment was a great point, but yours is as well.

Question for you though, since I've been trying to figure this out since I pulled up this post: What exactly is the point of "hiding" this from adults, besides cute gimmick? It's not like an abuser can somehow prevent a child from seeing a billboard that they themselves also see. Are we afraid that access to the phone number can be restricted? Well, this article does that all on its own.

What's the point? What's the benefit?

On the flip side, I'm VERY concerned at marketers trying to direct a message to my child while deliberately hiding that message from me, the parent. I personally don't care what that message is. It could be for abused kids or it could be to tell them that their parents should be turned into the authorities for not agreeing with the government. The message is irrelevant.

As a responsible parent in charge of creating the best 18 year old man I can out of my 6 and 4 year old boys, I NEED to be aware of as much as possible that their little brains are taking in. Not to censor them (although in some cases this is appropriate), but to temper that intake with a does of 38 years of wisdom that they simply do not possess at the moment.

I have no issues discussing child abuse with my sons. In fact I would love to do so in an effort to ensure that they come to me (or another adult) if one of their classmates or friends is in this situation. Hell, I want them to come to me if they feel in this situation too.

This billboard does not promote any of this. It separates me from my child in a very underhanded way.

vacri4• 13 years ago

Many teachers are extremely pro-active about figuring out signs of abuse.

'Many' is quite the weasel-word to use in this context.

JackFr• 13 years ago

In the US at least, teachers are mandated reporters and can be held ciminally and civilly liable for ignoring signs of abuse or neglect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandated_reporter

sigkill• 13 years ago

>There are far better ways to have a very high-quality 2-way covert channel

You said school. Can you name a few more?

jlgreco• 13 years ago

How about on cereal boxes, or in comic books. How many parents read all of the stuff in/on those?

pvaldes• 13 years ago

This advertissement is for adults in my opinion, and more specifically for to move the adult donnors. Not more, not less. Is very ineffective, and probably very expensive also.

You are not reaching the childrens living in the country, nor the childrens locked at home, or at the boarding schools, neither the babies/very small childrens that can not read still, nor the alienated that don't even notice that they are abused or that think that they "merit to be slapped" because they are... "too bad, too silly, too stupid"... people are very good lying to ourselves

And even if you reach a desired target they probably don't call you, a perfect stranger.

An abused child is frequently intensively surveilled, most of the time they are keep in a controlled environment, at home or in a small group of related people. Rarely could access freely to a public telephone and I bet that this boy or girl will avoid carefully (fear, shame...) to look directly to the advertissement shown for a few weeks in a random street of a big city.

> You said school. Can you name a few more?

School is basic, as health services, you can also add libraries, and TV.

In Spain an abused child goes to an hospital sooner or later, and some injuries are very dificult to hide or fake to a professional. A physician can take a discrete look under the shirt of a child and he/she knows what to search for. Later they can send a silent alert to the appropriate channels if this is suspicious or simply call the police if there is some gross evidence.

If you want to tell a telephone number to the children, simply assure that this number is a the school, in a poster at the hall. Pretty simple, safe and cheap also.

If you want to be really twisted, put this number in some selected books in the school's library with an inked rubber stamp.

Ask the teachers to spoke about it in a delicate and sensitive way. They can provide a better, more focused and controlled message in a safe environment. A poster in a solitary street with this aggressor can' have the same benefits and could even put him/her at risk. The adult could even beat him, menace or manipulate him distorting the message in unpredictable ways

If you want to reach a target not in education you could use the TV channels for childrens. When we are trying to sell a toy, a film or a burguer to a child there is not a safe place where the parents can hide. You can also introduce this theme in programs like sesame street, in a subtile way and with an apropriately, positive and carefully expressed message.

johnnyn• 13 years ago

Give me a break. My kids see things I don't see all the time. At the playground, in the car, everywhere. I don't dismiss what they say and I have them tell me about it. If I'm in a hurry, I simply agree with them and move on.

whaevr2• 13 years ago

>"Daddy, why does that kid look all beat up"

Im pretty sure its explained in the ad: "If someone hurts you, phone us"

I agree it could cause some confusion but how many kids are going to ask their parents after reading the ad? We obviously can't know for sure but I feel like the ad conveys enough information to the point that "this kid was hurt by someone, if this is happening to you call us, we can help"

run4yourlives7• 13 years ago

Because after all, all kids can read.

GigabyteCoin• 13 years ago

What an incredibly great use of technology.

sahaskatta• 13 years ago

Seems like a great idea for movie posters too. Children see an advertisement for a 'G' movie while adults see an advertisement for a 'R' movie.

mhb• 13 years ago

Wouldn't the 911 dispatcher be able to direct the kid to the appropriate service?

toast0• 13 years ago

Not in Spain, you'd need the 112 dispatcher to direct the kid. I thought about this as well, but I think the intent is to reach out to children who are being frequently abused and may not realize that abuse isn't normal; and maybe also reach out to children who know something is wrong but don't know who to call. I'm not sure if this ad is the most effective outreach available with this organization's budget, which I think is the real issue. (Although, doing PR on the ad seems to have been effective outreach)

lessnonymous• 13 years ago

Adult sees an advertisement for McDonald's Healthy Salad. Kid points to it and wants to go to McDonalds. Parent likes that kid responded to ad for salad.

But the kid was really responding to an ad for deep fried processed chicken and potato.

mark-r• 13 years ago

Nice fantasy, but not practical. You'll notice that the two images shown in the sign are nearly identical. You don't want a shadow of the one image to be seen in the other or it gives the entire illusion away.

vacri4• 13 years ago

Never going to happen, because the PR fallout would be terrible. Lenticular presentation doesn't make you immune from seeing the image if you're above a certain age. Adults will still see it if they're short, if they're sitting down, if the billboard company put it a bit too high or in a bad place, if you're crouching down to tie your kid's shoe, because you've been told it's there by an article or someone involved in installing it... the list goes on. This is the kind of thing people will overlook for a noble cause, but would have bad fallout for commercial gain.

bnegreve• 13 years ago

> Never going to happen,

I wouldn't be so sure. Advertisement industry uses a lot of tricks that are not really different from this one. Some people don't like them but most people don't notice or don't care.

Another example is Facebook that keeps adding features that reduce people's privacy, you see a lot of complains on the web, yet they don't change anything because 99% are fine with it.

So it's definitely not because a trick can be detected, that it isn't worth using it.

run4yourlives7• 13 years ago

Yeah, think of the PR fallout of using cartoonish characters, toys and fucking playgrounds to advertise directly to kids. McDonald's would never do that.

DigitalSea• 13 years ago

Child abuse is a serious issue and I applaud any campaign that aims to help bring it to the spotlight. I have a couple of serious questions about the campaign though:

1) What if a child is abnormally tall? They wouldn't get to see the advertisement. And trust me. I have a cousin who was taller than most average adults when he was 11 years old (might not be the average, but certainly tall enough the number wouldn't be seen by him).

2) The campaign aims to hide the number from adults, but what if the adult was abnormally short, they would see the campaign. Would this be a big deal? Probably not, but it does show a flaw or two in the ideas behind the campaign.

3) Is this enough? The intentions are noble and clear, but is a poster with magic number enough to help? Most people will see a poster with a beaten up kid, but no number, so it kind of loses effect. If the number was always visible it might be of more help and doubtful it would be any child in danger. The money spent on this campaign will far outweigh any benefit it provides and it somewhat saddens me.

The number #1 thing kids who are abused have mostly in common is that they go to school. Teachers are exceptionally good at spotting signs of abuse and reporting it, it's highly encouraged especially here in Australian educational communities. Posters with the number clearly displayed being plastered around school grounds and playgrounds would probably be more beneficial and helpful in my opinion as parents or perpetrators are most likely not following the kids they're abusing around the school between classes.

nl• 13 years ago

To (1) & (2): Perfect is the enemy of good.

To (3): No, only short people see the bruises. Read the article.

joshmlewis• 13 years ago

Ad content aside, this type of advertising is a step further of how grocery stores place certain items at eye level with kids vs eye level with adults, aka cereal. Very interesting progression.

nate00• 13 years ago

I'm not sure what to make of the sentence at the top of the ad.

Sometimes, child abuse is only visible to the child suffering it.

It seems like the sentence is supposed to be a clever wink, which makes me wonder whether the lenticular photo effect is meant for secret communication or for a discussion-provoking gimmick.

bostonpete• 13 years ago

It told me that the sign was more intended to promote awareness of child abuse issues than to really serve as a secret/hidden message to abused children.

minopret• 13 years ago

This campaign is a bit "meta". It succeeded to get our attention, or rather, the attention of people like us in Spain. As far as I can tell the lenticular posters are only a design concept.

Here in brackets are my guesses at emendations of the Google Translate version of what the ad agency wrote on YouTube: "We appreciate your comments. ANAR Foundation has few resources to give out [its] telephone [number for] complaint [about] abusers. Thanks [to] the publicity [the] campaign is having on media and [to] all [the] comments on social networking [it, ANAR Foundation] has achieved the main goal of the campaign: Raise awareness of the Foundation and the phone [number] 116 111 to assist children and adolescents at risk. We encourage you to continue to help raise awareness of the ANAR Foundation. Thank you very much." -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0h1mgpn95s

nichodges• 13 years ago

The headline of this ad is the giveaway to it being little more than an ad agency and their client wanting to 'be famous' (in the world of advertising), with a video about their idea that will reach 1000x as many people as the purported audience of the actual ad.

The use of charity clients by agencies to win awards is not unusual. Sometimes the ideas that win awards are truly effective and wonderful (The Tap Project[1], Million NYC[2]), but more often these are 'scam ads' that are never even seen by the intended audience.

The traditional advertising industry is attempting to cope with obsolescence in a way that sees it increasingly loosing touch with reality.

A tweet for Oreos recently won a major advertising award, and 14 people were credited[3]. How a lenticular that nobody will ever see in real life makes the top of HN is a bit of a mystery to me.

[1] http://www.unicefusa.org/campaigns/tap-project/ [2] http://www.millionnyc.com/ [3] http://t.co/lxI7W1ty9A

fyi80• 13 years ago

Oh my. In my day they just gave us coupons for free personal pan pizza for each 10 books we read.

NatW• 13 years ago

it seems this is a technique for targeted marketing in the abstract. One sign might target two age group market segments, simultaneously, a kind of 'message discrimination'. I find it a bit concerning precisely because the age groups may be unaware of the segregated presentation.

In this case it's theoretically a public service announcement, but it could alternatively be e.g: a business marketing toys / candy, 'under the radar' of parents.. The message of a political or religious group, or any number of possibilities.

jleader• 13 years ago

The whole thing strikes me as the ad agency trying to do something clever that will impress other ad industry folks, and not really trying to address any real issues. Basically, "here's some clever technology, how can we pretend it solves a problem?"

Seriously, abusers will let their kids look at an ad about child abuse, as long as it doesn't have a phone number on it, and the kid in the ad isn't injured?

Is the problem with getting child abuse reported really that the kids don't know the hotline number? "If only those poor abused kids knew the hotline number, they'd all call it."

Also, the lenticular lens restricts the image to a particular viewing angle, not a particular height, so kids standing farther away will see the adults-only image, and adults standing very close will probably be able to see at least the upper portion of the kids-only image.

eridius• 13 years ago

Did you read the whole article? The upper portion of the "kids-only image" is identical to the upper portion of the adult image. Only part of the lower half is any different.

brown9-22• 13 years ago

The article states that the agency was concerned with how to reach children looking at an ad without letting the adult they are with know they are looking at an ad about child abuse.

However, the version of the ad that adults see is still about child abuse.

bmmayer1• 13 years ago

Shouldn't this be the opposite? The kid sees a regular ad. The adult sees a disturbing picture that says "PLEASE DON'T BEAT UP YOUR KID."

brazzy• 13 years ago

No, because the point is to get abused kids to dial that number, and before that to understand what the message is about.

blackjack160• 13 years ago

Clever idea but I think the ad space is better utilized delivering the message as legibly as possible within that space. "Abused? Call NNN-NNN." This would increase effective range, making it harder for the abuser to evade. You can argue that it makes it easier to evade, but in a busy subway, or other closed environs, legibility is hard to suppress. They can also mix and match font and background colors to make it harder for the abuser to detect Banner patterns for avoidance. It would also be smart if the campaign could pseudo-randomize display spots, again making it harder to consciously evade the message.

If we had to go with the lenticular approach, they could also experiment with sound frequencies that kids are sensitive to, but adults would struggle with. That could be a cool hailing beacon to couple with the display.

lucb1e• 13 years ago

Am I the only one who thinks it's a good thing that people are at least trying to do the right thing for abused children? Trying to come up with something new that might help?

DanBC• 13 years ago

I thought it was fairly obvious that this ad-campaign is less about the actual gimmick being useful or not, and more about creating discussion.

The ad is probably not going to directly get the number into the hands of children, and there are much better ways to get the number to children (leaflets in loos at schools; leaflets in phonebooths at schools; etc) and so the numbers of children directly helped by this are probably going to be low.

But it does raise some interesting discussion.

brown9-22• 13 years ago

Of course that is good, but if the agency's principal motivation is something self-centered (getting attention), then they are using this issue as a vehicle for their own profit.

LekkoscPiwa3• 13 years ago

And this works as long as you don't advertise the whole world how you did it!

Idiots!

blots• 13 years ago

I doubt that parents abusing their kids or the kids being abused are even aware that some people would think of the relationship as abusive. What if it's just verbal bullying? And I suppose it's mostly psychological abuse. Maybe when the child grows up it will realize that the parent was wrong, but not at 10 years or younger.

Lenticular Photo Used To Secretly Convey Hot Line Number To Abused Kids

Related Stories