BROCCOLI BAIT AND SWITCH
The Television Bureau of Canada (TVB) and Toronto agency john st. have revealed that a five-week campaign featuring the virtues of broccoli was not for broccoli at all. Instead, it was designed to prove that television advertising can sell anything.
Back in January 2010, a TV campaign aired for broccoli pitting its “miraculous” health benefits against other so-called miracles. After just five weeks on air, without any other form of communication or marketing efforts, the “Miracle Food” TV campaign garnered some serious attention. Fan-created Facebook pages attracted over 20,000 followers and broccoli sales were up eight percent over the previous year. The most rewarding metric of all was the extra 188,574 pounds of broccoli that went into grocery carts across Canada during the month.
The TVB’s “Miracle Food” campaign consisted of three broadcast spots, directed by OPC’s Brian Lee Hughes, which point to TheMiracleFood.ca and a post-campaign print ad revealing the campaign’s real ulterior motive.
DISABLED REPRESENTATION ON TV October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month and a new report on minority representation on broadcast television shows that scripted characters with disabilities will represent only 1% of all scripted series regular characters–six characters out of 587–on the five broadcast networks: ABC, CBS, The CW, Fox, and NBC. Not only is this invisibility in the media misrepresentative of people with disabilities, it also means few opportunities for actors with disabilities to be cast.
The annual Where We Are On TV report issued by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) examined all series regular characters expected to appear on the 84 announced scripted series airing during the 2010-’11 broadcast network television season. The group analyzed the characters’ gender, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity. This is the first year, however, the study has examined characters with disabilities.
While people with disabilities are largely absent from TV, they are very present in the American scene. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2008 American Community Survey, the percentage of U.S. citizens reporting an apparent disability is slightly more than 12% (or 36.2 million people). The inclusion of people with non-apparent, ADA-covered disabilities, such as cancer or HIV, greatly increase this census number. Yet, even the original figure is nowhere nearly reflected by the broadcast networks.
PEOPLE IN THE NEWS…. Design/VFX studio Spontaneous has added VFX design/Flame artist Nikk Schlumpf to its N.Y. team. Schlumpf has created motion graphics and VFX sequences on spots for the likes of Nike, Calvin Klein, Virgin and Budweiser while crafting channel idents for Comedy Central and ABC. Schlumpf joins Spontaneous from Version2 where he held the post of VFX designer/art director, steering projects for an agency roster including BBDO, Saatchi & Saatchi and DDB….Angel La Riva has joined Dallas editing, audio and VFX boutique 3008 as post producer, moving over from agency Dieste, where he was a broadcast producer for 14 years. La Riva began his ad career as a writer at Sosa, now Bromley Communications, in San Antonio. He also worked at Ornelas & Associates and Berry Brown before moving to Dieste in 1996. First as copywriter, then broadcast producer, he teamed with such clients as Taco Bell, Southwest Airlines, JCPenney, and Clorox….
First-Time Feature Directors Make Major Splash At AFI Fest, Generate Oscar Buzz
Two first-time feature directors who are generating Oscar buzz this awards season were front and center this past weekend at AFI Fest in Hollywood. Rachel Morrison, who made history as the first woman nominated for a Best Cinematography Oscar---on the strength of Mudbound in 2018--brought her feature directorial debut, The Fire Inside (Amazon MGM Studios), to the festival on Sunday (10/27), and shared insights into the film during a conversation session immediately following the screening. This came a day after William Goldenberg, an Oscar-winning editor for Argo in 2013, had his initial foray into feature directing, Unstoppable (Amazon MGM Studios), showcased at the AFI proceedings. He too spoke after the screening during a panel discussion. The Fire Inside--which made its world premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival--tells the story of Claressa “T-Rex” Shields (portrayed by Ryan Destiny), a Black boxer from Flint, Mich., who trained to become the first woman in U.S. history to win an Olympic Gold Medal in the sport. She achieved this feat--with the help of coach Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree Henry)--only to find that her victory at the Summer Games came with relatively little fanfare and no endorsement deals. So much for the hope that the historic accomplishment would be a ticket out of socioeconomic purgatory for Shields and her family. It seemed like yet another setback in a cycle of adversity throughout Shields’ life but she persevered, going on to win her second Gold Medal at the next Olympics and becoming a champion for gender equality and equitable pay for women in sports. Shields has served as a source of inspiration for woman athletes worldwide--as well as to the community of... Read More