Drinking one to two glasses of white milk a day is riskier than secondhand smoke. That’s the absurd claim made by the tobacco industry being investigated in the latest TV ad in the Truth® documentary campaign, presented by the American Legacy Foundation and its partners Arnold Worldwide of Boston and Crispin Porter + Bogusky of Miami, to help prevent youth smoking.
Directed by Eddie Moretti of Vice Films, Canada, “Milk” features roving documentarian, Derrick Beckles, also of Vice, investigating the tobacco industry claim by visiting a dairy farm in upstate New York. The dairy farmer featured in the spot is shocked by the tobacco industry’s claim and assures Beckles that hazardous ingredients like benzene, arsenic and polonium-210, all ingredients added to cigarettes, are not added to milk.
In addition to the spot, a website, www.milk-off.com, will launch at the end of the month, which was created in collaboration with digital agency Cuban Council, San Francisco, to help illustrate the ridiculousness of what the tobacco industry said by challenging users to a compete in a “milkoff.” “Milkoff” is a flash animation game that requires players to pull the udders of a cow and aim the milk into buckets while fighting off stinging bees. Visitors can also send a “squirt alert” to their friends.
Users enter a message illustrated via a flash movie, squirting their words from a cow’s udder. “Squirt Alerts” can be sent to friends via e-mail. Truth® is also creating a widget to be used in social networking sites. Typing a message into the flash piece generates cut and paste embed code so that users can leave comments on their friends pages, represented in milk.
This is not the first time a viral dimension has been added to Truth®, Last fall the Infect Truth® portion of the campaign featured several distinctive interactive elements through its Web site www.thetruth.com., recognizing the popularity of digital media in teens’ lives. The “infections” consisted of downloads, mini-sites, TV spots and tobacco fact-based messages called “quickies.” Teens were also able to send e-messages written on a hairy man’s back at hairy-mail.com. (Hairy-mail.com won a Bronze at the One Show.)
Also available were daily widgets that could be downloaded to a desktop to keep users updated on new “infection” launches. And Truth® profile pages were placed on popular social networking sites such as MySpace, Hi5, Bebo and Picza.
Nicole Dorrler, director of marketing, youth prevention, American Legacy Foundation, is hopeful this campaign will follow in the footsteps of Infect Truth®, which was a success virally. In doing a scan of online traffic from October of last year to April of this year, the main truth website was averaging 150,000 visits a week (three times the average prior), coupled with the five social networking sites the campaign started having a presence on. One hundred and forty-three thousand “infections” were spread via e-mail and 100,000 “infections” were embedded into personal profiles. With the entertainment factor of a game, she believes this campaign will be as successful virally.
“We have built upon what we learned from the Infect Truth® campaign. We’re not only promoting active participation but blending it with entertainment and fact as a method of message delivery so that teens not only take the assets but make it part of their personal story,” Dorrler said.
Truth® as a brand is always reinventing itself, staying relevant and finding cost effective ways to continue. Patricia McLaughlin, senior director of communications for American Legacy, points out that the tobacco industry spends more than 36 million dollars a day in the United States alone on marketing efforts. That’s more than the Truth® budget for the year.
“The success of our initial online campaign showed us that continuing such a presence by having “Milkoff” be its own online entity offering ways for teens to engage with the tobacco facts and spread the message in a fun way that appeals to them is the right way to go,” she said.
Apple and Google Face UK Investigation Into Mobile Browser Dominance
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More