David vs. Goliath: the SWOT Analysis

The past three days, the Journalists' Initiative Association conducted a workshop on "social advertising" -- public service campaigns. Not exactly journalism, but the funding came from the World Bank (Russian has the same saying as English: "Never look a gift horse -- or an NGO with deep pockets -- in the mouth"). Plus, it was for a good cause: to get Ukrainians to drink more vodka. Ha, ha. Actually, to discourage young people in Kharkiv from smoking and drinking.

The need for such a campaign is obvious. Outside schools, you'll see students -- I'm not even sure they're teenagers yet -- smoking during breaks. It's not just boys: Smoking rates among girls here are much higher than in the United States. And if you walk along Lenin Prospect or through Shevchenko Park, you'll see masses of young people, especially guys, clutching and swigging from dark bottles of beer at all hours of the day. The Breakfast of Champions.

So I didn't mind getting roped into the workshop. I've got a little background on advertising: I give it a glancing blow in some of my courses (Media Ethics, Comm Tech & Global Soc), and I'm surrounded by incredibly smart and creative advertising faculty members. Plus, if your title includes the word "professor," more people automatically believe what you say. It's like being the Scarecrow in "The Wizard of Oz" after he gets his diploma. In fact, when I use the title "associate professor," I have an average of 27.4 percent more credibility than when I use the title "journalist." This would increase to 39.2 percent if I ever scam my way to a full professorship, statistics show.

In my parts of the workshop, I talked about creativity, the different appeals that ads make, target groups and focus groups, integrated marketing communications, and ethics in advertising (with the self-deprecating, albeit stale line, "Given the topic, a lot of people probably think this will be the shortest lecture in history").

The audience was a group of citizens who have a grant to launch the anti-smoking, anti-drinking campaign. Angelina Soldatenko, who coordinated the training for the JIA, gave a tireless performance about campaign strategy, PR, marketing and such. We videotaped and critiqued each participant doing a television interview, and we also had the group practice holding press conferences.

The participants did a SWOT Analysis -- identifying their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (which in Russian would be "Сильных и слабых сторон, возможностей и угроз Анализ," but Сссву Analysis doesn't have the same ring). I walked the group through a quick exercise: What if David did a SWOT Analysis before confronting Goliath? The participants came up with things like ...

Strengths (besides the slingshot): Belief in victory; confidence; having God on his side

Threats: Goliath, aka Philip Morris (which I can get away with, since I hail from PM's home town)

Anyway, I think you can see where I was headed: that the local campaign will be more like a guerrilla (advertising) war, but "you folks are on the right side, the moral side, the ethical side." And I warned that you don't want to blow your advantage by doing something dumb or unethical, like lighting up a cigarette at the end of your anti-smoking press conference. (Hey, you didn't see David toking on a victory cigar after taking out the Big Guy. But blunders happen: Zinedine Zidane, France's head-butting soccer legend and spokesman for the European Union's "stub it out" anti-smoking campaign, was caught smoking a cigarette after last year's World Cup. The story was headlined: "He shoots, he scores, he lights another fag…")

Then I launched into taste and decency and -- let's go to the videotape ... What do you think of this commercial Ford is running in the UK?

http://dl.net.hr/webcafe/filmici/evil_twin_cat.mpg

Shockvertising occurs in PSAs, too -- like this commercial against domestic violence that got pulled in Canada [Warning: This is pretty graphic, so keep your cursor on the Stop button and bail if it's too much]:


I also showed an ad by the U.N. Mine Action Service that showed kids at a typical American soccer game getting blown up. (The tagline: "If there were land mines here, would you stand for them anywhere?") U.S. television stations refused to run the commercial. A guy at the social-advertising workshop -- a former police officer -- said he'd like to take the ad's creator out in the country and ... never mind. It's a disturbing ad, and it elicits disturbing responses.

I showed a variety of print advertisements, too -- some that probably crossed the line, some that were close, and some that were tasteful and thoughtful (though maybe a little too clever). Here are some examples:

Whether I managed to say anything intelligent or insightful about the above ads is anybody's guess. I may have just sounded profound because of the professorial aura. I sometimes feel like an impostor when I do presentations like this. It's small wonder: If you delve into etymology, you'll find that "professor" and "impostor" both emanate from the same Greek root -- actually, dating back to Aramaic times. You can look it up yourself ...