Reading a magazine on the train last night, I came across this ad for American Apparel:
I thought was really strong and provocative. Whilst campaigning businesses aren’t new, it’s still rare to see a company come out and take a strong position on an “unpopular” issue like immigration reform, making a direct call for legislation and calling the status quo “an apartheid system”. It’s also rare for a business to take a stand like this without a charity or NGO partner sharing the headline.
Now, of course, there are likely to be benefits as well as risks in a campaign like this, but in this article one interviewee notes how “startling” it is to see an advocacy campaign run by a business that advocates for its workers rather than its customers.
You could change the logo at the bottom and this campaign could have come from an NGO or a charity.
Do you think it’s more or less powerful because it comes from a business? Do you think it will be taken more or less seriously by the public and policymakers as a result?
(*Now I know that it’s a US campaign, so strictly I should spell it “Legalize”, but I realised that in a previous post, I used the American plural “trade unions” rather than the proper English “trades union” and I am trying to balance things out.)
