Daintree Paper, a Dublin stationery shop with a nice line in wedding invitations, service booklets, menus, placecards and thank you notes, has added a new product to its shelves. It goes by the name "A Shred of Decency" and is described as confetti "made from 100 per cent recycled lies".
Advertising agency Rothco has joined the Camden Street shop, owned by Ger and Lar Barron, for an online campaign promoting a Yes vote in the marriage equality referendum. Its message, launched today, is striking: Daintree says paper is its "favourite thing in the whole world", and it wasn't "one bit happy" to see it used "to spread some ugly lies" about gay people and same-sex marriage".
It says it will collect any “negative and dishonest” literature produced by “a section of the No campaign” and recycle it into “positive” confetti, with the proceeds from the sales going to Yes Equality.
An animated advertisement detailing its campaign has been uploaded to ShredofDecency.ie, while social media “influencers” on the Yes side have been recruited to spread the word via – what else – hashtags and selfies.
Small businesses have been in the news lately for having somewhat different beliefs. Ashers bakery in Northern Ireland, which refused to complete an order for a cake bearing the words "support gay marriage", ended up having to defend its ideology in a Belfast court.
In Washington State, a florist lost a similar case after claiming her "relationship with Jesus" wouldn't allow her to provide flowers to same-sex weddings. Such cases give lie to the phrase that there is no such thing as bad publicity.
They also risk giving the impression that the wedding industry isn’t interested in making money. Of course, it is. And while the business world might, on the whole, be conservative, it can also sense when public opinion has shifted. A view that might once have been seen as “political” has become mainstream.
The Daintree-Rothco campaign is gauntlet-throwing not just because it attacks the honesty of its opponents, but because it demonstrates to companies with quiet “Yes” sympathies that it is possible to advertise your beliefs and your business at the same time. Indeed, now might be a smart time to do so.
But let’s not get carried away. Confetti itself is still evil. Please check with your wedding venue before releasing it into the wild. Somebody has to hoover that stuff up.