R/GA

This is work for the Ad Council by R/GA New York.

This campaign started out with the goal of raising awareness for harassment among teens and dating violence. While talking with teens, R/GA unearthed a new, but very related problem that has only begun to present itself since the mass digitalization of communication evolved within the past decade or so. This problem is digital abuse, and has come to include such abusive behaviors as, "incessant, harassing texts, to pressure for nude pics, to the loss of privacy resulting from hacked personal accounts." The "That's not cool" campaign is R/GA's digital platform to not only help teens understand that this controlling behavior is in fact a form of abuse, but also to direct them to resources that can help them cope. Below is a picture of the That's Not Cool website; it is clear from both the website and the commercial that public service announcements and Ad Council messages have taken a more creative approach to reaching young people these days. The chastising, beat-it-into you type messages have disappeared and been replaced with more metaphoric, authentic messages. With this spot in particular, the dialogue presents questions that a lot of teens have gotten via text, so the campaign is poignantly applicable to real life. The newness of this "digital abuse" issue illustrates how advertising, and P.S.A.s in particular, will prove vital to historians in the future. Ad Council messages are created to counter-act a problem in our society or culture, and many years later they will reveal all kinds of anthropological information, from the technology we used, to the ethnic and racial tensions of the time, to our political and environmental landscape. The value of advertising is so underestimated; even when examined from a purely research-oriented or historical perspective, advertising is a key component to understanding societies.