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Straight Talk

Please don’t feed the ad execs
By Pieta Woolley

Publish Date: 9-Jun-2005

The Vancouver Aquarium is in hot water with some residents of Coquitlam after running ads in the Tri-City News that slammed household pets. The aquarium pulled the ads last week after it received its third (of seven) complaints.

One ad shows a little girl looking at her pet bunny and saying: “I’m so done with you, Flopsy.” Another features a man telling his dog, “Winston, you’re pathetic.” The third has a child telling her kitten, “You’re boring, Mittens.”

The punchline: “Regular animals may never seem the same,” presumably, after their owners visit the aquarium.

“This is a slap in the face to people who rescue animals,” Emma Vandewetering, a self-described “angry mother” in Port Moody, told the Straight. “Especially the bunny one. If they knew how many bunnies are dumped each year; people think they’re disposable.”

Vandewetering said she understands the ads are supposed to be funny, but to her they’re not.

It’s not a complete surprise to Lynne DeCew, the aquarium’s vice-president of marketing. After advertising firm Palmer-Jarvis DDB (Note: AAS the SPCA's ad firm of choice that produced the SPCA's sleazy "dogs as life-style" ads) submitted the ads, several aquarium employees saw them, and some were concerned. They changed the text from “Kind of wrecks it for other animals” to “Regular animals may never seem the same”. Then, according to DeCew, staff showed the ads to 40 members of the public, with none reporting a problem with them. However, the ad was tested in the Tri-City News, just to make sure.

After receiving five e-mails and two phone calls of protest, the aquarium cancelled the campaign, which was to include posters in bus shelters and SkyTrain stations.

“Perhaps, even though a majority in a test situation may like something…if a small minority do not think it’s funny they can make their feelings known quickly and loudly,” DeCew said. “There was no groundswell of opposition, but a few misunderstood it and didn’t like it.” She described the humour as “tongue-in-cheek”. DeCew would not disclose how much the aquarium spent on the ads, and added that she has not discussed whether or not Palmer-Jarvis will offer the next campaign at a discount.

Palmer-Jarvis did not return the Straight’s call by deadline. On its Web site, the award-winning company describes how it comes up with ideas: “Like a gazelle running wild and free, big ideas must be chased, tackled, captured, fed, and nursed back to health.”