The other day while driving on I-93 I spotted a new billboard ad titled "Cheat Death" from POM Wonderful (As shown above). While I think the POM Wonderful's new campaign is a clever solution for promoting the health benefits of drinking the juice, the shock value of a noose trying to draw attention made me a little uneasy. Maybe it's the recent media attention with the suicide of a Massachusetts teen in reaction to being bullied, but the overall tone left a bad taste in my mouth. The recent billboard ads have been featured in major metropolitan areas including: Boston, Chicago, DC, LA, Miami, and Toronto.
I guess it wasn't just me who was turned off by the ad, turns out POM has already received a fair amount of complaints throughout the various markets concerned that it was not a appropriate subject matter. On a more positive note POM has decided to pull the "Cheat Death" ad and replace it with other ads used in the campaign. Really surprised that one made it through testing at all…
4 comments:
I was driving on 93 and also saw this billboard. I saw the noose first, ick, then read it ... mixed feelings... I'm not sure a noose possibly breaking & saving your life reinforces the healthy life saving quality of Pom, instead the more negative images came to mind.
Glad its being replaced!
This is really interesting we have to be careful because we don't know what could happen in those situations, that's why I feel so good when I read this article.
I was so depressed because I'm living a big quantity of problems in this period of my live, but your blog helped me to recover my energy and make me feel alive. Thanks for your post, I hope to continue reading more interesting themes as this one in the future.
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