There is much debate within the LGBT community about whether our ads supporting marriage equality are too soft and tepid, to the point that they are ineffective. Some people blame our myriad losses on our reluctance to run ads that have feeling and actually say something. These critics claim our side is scared of its own shadow and misreads public opinion — leading to forgettable advertisements.
Here is an ad from Australia that is significantly more bold than what we see in America. I’d love to get our readers’ thoughts on this ad, as well as the ads the LGBT community and its army of consultants have run in various referendum campaigns.
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I’m definitely one of those critics. Rhetoric about rights and benefits, while not unimportant, will only get us so far. Bold ads like this one and other recent ads from Ireland, the Netherlands, and Argentina that appeal to viewers’ sense of empathy and pack an emotional punch, are exactly what we need in the marriage equality fight in the U.S.
On style points for me this ad is a loser. The clicking at the beginning and throughout is highly annoying and if I didn’t know what it was about I’d turn it off. More importantly I think it took a very long time to get to its short message and misses the mark for that reason. I think the theory behind it is a good one, but the implementation is poor.
This ad is great, and exactly the opposite of that which has lost us all but 1 election.
It needs to be condensed to under a minute, though.
This is what I wrote about the current crop of ads from Maine that they are trumpeting so loudly. this Aussie ad is the one I would put front and center in their place.
“we’ve been doing this in every election in the past, and we have lost all times but one– Washington state.
I have said many times, and will continue to say, that the enemy is not the Christian right, the enemy is the closet. And this campaign, like every one in the past, have been DEEPLY closeted in its mentality.
Can’t show real gay people. Can’t show our families. can’t show our faith. Can’t show reality.Can’t show our children. Can’t show our marriages are publicly celebrated by our families and our churches.
Why are we asking people who are afraid of, despise, ignorant of, confused about gay people, how to approach people who are afraid of gay people? By definition, they don’t know.
Why aren’t we asking gay people who live full and complete lives as gay people within their families, communities, and churches…
WHAT HAS WORKED FOR YOU?
And finally, I want to see this: ads directed at gay people, urging them to come out to everyone they know, and discuss why marriage is impofrtant to them.
If we keep on doing what we have always done, we will keep on getting what we always have– rejection.
I like it very much….and I agree with Ben: Less is more. It needs to be just a little shorter, imho.
Love the ad — condense it down to 60 seconds, and it will be perfect. We definitely need to encourage people to come out of the closet. Our collective silence is a far greater barrier to our achieving full equality than anything the “religious reich” cooks up.
It’s a beautiful video – the first time I saw it, I really teared up.
I also agree that this video is much more effective in portraying the full spectrum of Gay and Lesbian life than the commercials we’ve seen in California, Maine, and other states.
Unfortunately, I believe that, if a commercial like the one above (or the excellent ads against discrimination coming out of South America) tried to air here in the States, many television stations would flatly refuse to run them – the same old fear of ‘offending’ their conservative viewers, and let’s be honest – a television station or network brave enough to run this sort of ad would get a lot of hateful backlash.
The pro-Equality folks in Maine are doing the best they can with the environment they are having to deal with. It’s unfortunate, but it seems to me that it boils down to a choice between ‘bland’ commercials that television stations will air, or more authentic fare that is much less likely to be aired. :(
[...] a meeting with members of the advocacy group GetUp! (famous most recently for incredibly compelling marriage equality advertisement that’s gone absolutely viral), despite the fact that the group won an “intimate [...]
It is a myth that our pro-marriage ads have been tepid. There have been hard-hitting ads, including one in CA in which opposition to gay marriage was compared to racial segregation. Samuel Jackson did the voiceover. No on 1 ran a number of very moving ads that highlighted real Maine families hurt by marriage discrimination and also ran ads accusing the other side of wanting to shame kids with gay families.
The issue isn’t whether the ad is hard or soft, and the issue isn’t whether a particular ad moves us, gay TWO readers. The issue is whether the ad hones a message that is is effective with a given electorate in a given state at a given time. The post-election analysis from CA indicates that our ads were ineffective, and it didn’t matter whether it was a hard ad w/ S. Jackson or a soft ad. This is simply a failure of the campaign to identify an effective message and the blame falls on the consultants hired by No on 8, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner.
Incredibly, No on 1 hired GQR a year later. However, while there was again a failure to identify a winning message, that failure was less important in an off-off election. The loss in ME was almost entirely the product of a failed GOTV effort. You can look at turnout in ever county, and the Yes side beat the No side in GOTV resoundingly. No ads would have made a difference. In 2012,turnout will be high on both sides, so the ads will be more important.
Fortunately, for their 2012 effort the pro-gay side in ME does not appear to be going in for a second helping of GQR. Hopefully,they will carefully focus-group a series of themes. If “real lives and real people” works as a theme, then an ad like this one could very well be effective.
Sorry, David, I heard all of that before. I disagreed with it then, and I disagree with it now.
Our ads were tepid, dishonest, cowardly, and closeted in their mentality.
more importantly, they have failed in thirty elections.
Why are we asking people who are afraid of, despise, ignorant of, confused about gay people, how to approach people who are afraid of gay people? By definition, they don’t know.
Why aren’t we asking gay people who live full and complete lives as gay people within their families, communities, and churches…
WHAT HAS WORKED FOR YOU?
I can tell you what hasn’t worked– the closet.
[...] the amazing “It’s Time” ad from GetUp! Australia that went viral last year and brought international attention to [...]