Outdoor Advertising Association of America
Big ups to Asa who tracked them down.
Some info about the Recession 101 billboards:
The Outdoor Advertising Association of America is overseeing an inspirational advertising campaign providing an optimistic take on the global financial crisis. The Recession 101 messages are being presented on backdrops designed to look like lined notepad paper, mounted on digital billboards, traditional billboards, posters and street furniture.
The economic “lessons,” which include such catchphrases such as “self worth beats net worth,” and “stop obsessing about the economy, you’re scaring the children,” started going up in May and now number around 2,000 postings across the country.
Recession 101 is a light hearted and succinct reminder to everyone that the nation will get through these troubled times and come out in the end.
Members of the OAAA have donated printing, materials and billboard space, while the private anonymous donor has paid for the campaign’s design.
OAAA has set up www.recession101.org and a special Twitter channel: twitter.com/Recession101
The campaign is being developed by Charlie Robb, from Charchin Creative, Port Saint Lucie, Florida. Robb was also involved in the Messages from God billboard campaign of 1999 which also was sponsored by an anonymous donor.
At recession101.org, there's this jewel of a statement that pinpoints the rationale for the bullshit campaign:
The recession has hurt one of America's greatest attributes--its unshakeable optimism.
Oh snap. And for a moment there I thought that the attribute they were talking about was the 300 million people who are trying to figure out this mess, 7 million of whom are trapped in the prison-industrial complex, 40 million of whom have no health insurance, and a whole shit-ton of whom can't find a job or have given up on finding a job or aren't making enough money in their jobs to live well.
Fuck you Outdoor Advertising Association of America, fuck your callousness towards how badly we are hurting, and fuck your utter disrespect for the dignity of our lives.
If you would like to, ahem, be a bit more polite and a bit less profane in your staunch criticism of this advertising campaign, please, I encourage you, drop them a line, leave them a little note. Heck, go ahead and ring up our man Charlie Robb out of Florida who dreamed this up. He could use some restoration back to this earth.
Now, for those of you who've played this game before and are tired of more strategy-less Activist tactics like these (and I count myself among them), we can do something equally strategy-less but perhaps a bit more fun. Like posting a series of online 'billboards' at the Recession 101 website and the OAAA website, or sending postcards to Charlie in dear old Port St. Lucie. I imagine our reasoning would start with this:
The recession has hurt one of America's greatest attributes--its advertising industry.
And then we can throw them chiding messages to bring the point home! They're just light-hearted reminders, you know. Like:
Recession 101: Stop obsessing about how few things people are buying right now; if it gets really bad and you lose your job, you can always sleep on your friend's couch for a while.
Recession 101: Citizen worth beats consumer worth.
Recession 101: Funny thing about recessions...they put advertisers into such a nervous panic that they air messages of assurance that no one even believes.
I'm sure y'all could come up with much snappier quips than these. Let's hear them.
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