Do the gum pop, flick the V-sign, stop the shame

The Gum Strut. The Gum Swish. The Gum Pop. The Gum Curve.
Sorry, what? If you haven't seen this surprisingly elegant campaign for the Gum Litter Taskforce, now in its second year, these are the shapes thrown by silhouetted figures as they responsibly deposit chewed up morsels into a street litter bin.

I like these "Bin It Your Way" posters, designed by Focus Advertising, and not just because their visual style reminds me of the opening credit sequence to Mad Men (and it's always good to be reminded of the opening credit sequence to Mad Men).

I like them because they don’t lecture or shame passers-by for the confectionery disposal sins of their pasts. They’re playful and they get their message across without judgment.

Educational campaigns that try to change consumer behaviour have been known to deploy heavy dollops of shame. Previous anti-litter campaigns have taken our sense of disgust with wanton, thoughtless waste disposal and rammed home the idea that litter louts are not only unhygienic, but rotten to their selfish cores. You can have a zero-tolerance policy on litter, or any societal ill, and still be irked by aggressively framed public messages.

Safefood’s anti-obesity campaigns are a prime example of an attempt to shame the public into changing their behaviour – some of its television ads have chosen to mock the obese and overweight.

For sure, there is a sense of national denial about this public health issue. But presenting comic grotesques with delusions about their self-image – the fat man who lives with his mother, the fad diet know-it-all cheerfully ordering fast food – hardly seems the most helpful way of highlighting the fact.

Another Safefood ad, for its “Stop the Spread” campaign, showed a family tucking into carb-laden plates in front of the television, as a doom-monger voice- over conveyed the weird idea that excess fat is as contagious as a movie-style killer virus. It was either laughable or it was enough to make you want to stick your fingers down your throat, which can hardly have been the intention.

More recently, a "Get Britain Fertile" marketing wheeze by pregnancy-testing company First Response decided the best way to encourage women to require its kits was to transform 45-year-old television presenter Kate Garraway into a much older pregnant woman. "An elderly woman with a bump, ugghh, how unnatural," its target market are apparently supposed to think, before immediately leaping into bed with the nearest fertile man. Phew, there's the pink line – biological clock foiled, moral panic averted.

Happily, sprogged-up Irish people have just been treated to a more humorous call-to-action by the healthcare industry. Earlier this month, Pfizer Healthcare Ireland ran a vaccination campaign with the support of the Health Service Executive to stress the importance of childhood immunisation.

It didn’t try to make new parents feel guilty for not vaccinating their children, as it reasonably might have done in light of the recent measles outbreak in Wales. Instead, it made everyone smile with an image of an indefatigably happy baby making a V-for-victory sign from his buggy.

“Every vaccination is a little victory”, the ad declared, with the words “in the ongoing battle against serious childhood diseases” added in smaller font. The television ad is even more amusing, as our baby-hero flicks triumphant V-signs at everyone he sees on the drive home from the doctor’s office.

It would be a brave agency that pitched a light-hearted anti-smoking campaign, but such campaigns have been known to exist – in Canada, social smoking has been likened to flatulence. “Well, it’s true that I fart, but I wouldn’t call myself a farter. I’m a social farter,” says its protagonist.

Calculating which tone will be the most effective for which message must be a tricky task for marketing researchers. I only know I have much warmer feelings towards ads that try to elicit positive reactions than I do towards those that provoke negative sentiments of either self-hatred or hostility towards others.

I’d much rather feel amused than ashamed, and like whatever it is the advertiser wants me to do was really my idea all along.

Indeed, the “Bin It Your Way” choreography theme is so fun, it almost makes me want to start chewing gum just so I can do handstands to the bin to dispose of it. Given one of the campaign’s funders is the Mars-owned gum brand Wrigley’s, and given the fact that advertisers don’t always have single motivations, perhaps this is part of the cunning plan all along.