Advertising and the Consumer Council of Fiji

I made note of a quote I read somewhere a few months back:

"The head of Black and Decker once said, folks don’t buy our products because they want one inch drills, they buy our stuff because they want one inch holes."

As an advertising agency, it's important to keep our eyes on the latter (the holes), not the former (the drill). Getting attention in an ever-increasing world of messages requires more creative thinking and creative thinking all too often gets a bad rap.

The Consumer Council of Fiji filed a complaint about an ad we ran this week for KIDANET. Here's a copy of the ad which spawned the complaint (click on it for a larger size):

[NOTE: My response here is from the position of Oceanic and my own perspective. I do not speak for or represent KIDANET.]

The nature of the complaint from the Consumer Council was that KIDANET was somehow attempting to benefit from the scourge of the recent Swine Flu outbreak...that the advertisement was meant to scare people. It's not just this ad either, according to the news report on Fiji TV last night. Apparently, the people who make Protex soap were equally evil in their advertising direction.

I've included video segments of this headlining story below...please feel free to folllow along...