Given how important family, faces and future generations are, you think this “water babies” TV commercial from San Diego would be home run hit. It’s not.
This month, I’m conducting my first round of field trials for the Due Diligence Test Panel. To start, I pulled “water babies” and 9 other pieces from EPA’s Nonpoint Source Outreach Toolbox. These pieces are offered up as models for others to use or emulate, so they’re fair game for some public critique.
As you can see from the attached memo, the DDTP gave the piece below average marks across the board. So what what’s wrong? Here’s one obvious shortcoming — the piece fails badly at Step One: Begin with Behavior. Here are some actual quotes from everyday citizens who watched it:
- “not very clear what you should do”.
- “The video tells the viewer that water pollution begins at home, but gives no further information about causes or prevention. The imagery of the babies in the context of water pollution seems overly dramatic and/or inflammatory”.
- “The weakest point is that the piece only tells you to “think” about the water pollution impacts caused by your activities around the house – it doesn’t give examples of harmful activities and it doesn’t actually tell you to that you should change your habits”.
But the weak call to action can’t explain all of the low marks this piece received. What are your thoughts on what else went wrong?
Click the link below for the full Do Diligence Test Panel report:
Environmental Communications Report
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I could barely follow the message; mostly I was worrying about the baby. Is that baby going to drowned? What’s going to happen next? The image was very distracting and the call to action (what they want me to do) was weak to non existent.
I’m with Trish. I certainly felt anxiety about the babies. Yikes. And they’re in a pool which is a clear disconnect with beaches and bays per their message. Most people won’t know that they’re showing an outfall either and don’t know how that relates at all to their homes which is where the ad says pollution starts. Last critique is showing the danger/peligro sign. It was emphasized but viewers couldn’t read it in English or Spanish. It would be better to produce two different videos for the different audiences (English- and Spanish-speaking) as well.
I was also very concerned about the babies drowning. Most of the time the ad was was playing I was marveling that the babies could swim so well. Then I wondered if I could find baby swimming lessons in my area for my little guy. Pollution? Clean water? Totally trumped by magical swimming babies.
I agree with the above comments. I also kept thinking why anyone would toss out a perfectly good baby, and are discarded babies really a significant stormwater pollutant? I thought they might focus on the diaper, but then I realized it was about the fear and shock value, which overwhelmed the message. In fairness to Think Blue San Diego, it was part of a larger campaign, so this “awareness ad” was followed up with other ads with more specific calls for action. It is fairly worthless outside of that larger context. EPA’s NPS Outreach Toolbox has links to the other pieces of the TBSD campaign here: http://www.epa.gov/nps/toolbox/mediacampaign_detail.htm?#93. But even accounting for this, I was not impressed.
Disclosure: I work for EPA and helped develop the NPS Outreach Toolbox. This was not one of the ads that EPA features (it is merely included). EPA will consider dropping this “water baby” ad in its next update of the Toolbox. The ads featured in EPA’s Toolbox can be found here: http://www.epa.gov/nps/toolbox/mediacampaign_detail.htm?#93
I too was waiting for ‘what I’m supposed to do next’. I knew of infants innate ability to swim but was having a tough time putting the message and visual together. Even if it is part of larger campaign as Don says the message the visuals are disconnected.