Is the Ad Council Playing Fair?

Is the Ad Council Playing Fair? Smokey the Bear telling us, "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires", McGruff, the crime dog, who takes a "bite out of crime', and slogans like "A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste", have made the Ad Council a trusted icon for over sixty years, but has the Council abused our trust? The Ad Council's recent "anti pesticide" campaign sadly is an indication that they have fallen prey to the same political polarization found in print and broadcast media. The Ad Council defines their mission as "to identify a select number of significant public issues and stimulate action on those issues through communication programs that make a measurable difference in our society." The Council has been so successful at their endeavor of effecting positive change that they now bask in donated media time worth over a billion dollars a year. This market value alone (without adding donations) elevates them to the status of one of the top ten advertisers in the United States. The PSAs created by the Council are funded by corporate sponsorships and produced by volunteers from premier advertising agencies. Interestingly any organization can apply for public service advertising if they can show a significant public problem for which a solution can be offered through advertising, in essence, a call to action directed to the individual and groups must sport a nice chunk of change to accomplish this venture. It takes a minimum of $600,000 for non-profit groups or $800,000 for government agencies per year to reach just one target audience. Past campaigns like "Friends don't let Friends Drive Drunk" fit snugly under the guidelines established by the founders of the Ad Council, who desired to effect positive change. Due to such a successful track record, both donors and the public have given the council free rein; it appears now it is time to rein them in. Factions in the Ag community believe that the Ad Council's latest PSA produced in conjunction with Earth Share, an environmental coalition with a notable aversion to pesticides, and does not comply with the guidelines the council established. For one, pesticides can hardly be "a pressing social issue" in fact the majority of the population would contend our country is safer because of the diseases pesticides have wiped out. Yet in response to a survey completed by the Lieberman Research Group, the Advertising Council learned that children's needs were the most important public service advertising issue. Thus, the anti-pesticide PSA was designed to appeal to mothers by using a wiser female mentor desperately urging moms to protect their child from pesticides in their school classroom. The sixty second spot goes on to infer that medical conditions like asthma and cancer are caused by pesticides, without any medical substantiation. Finally, and most ridiculously, the "mature mentor" voice tells young mothers that pesticides are responsible for lower IQs in the classroom, (that comment naturally begs the question of what is responsible for the child in the same classroom with superior intelligence.) Earth Share's strategy is vintage "Alar scare" but today, thanks to various agricultural watchdog groups like the Food Forethought Foundation their tactics are quickly exposed. If safety at school is a cause near and dear to Earth Share why not a PSA on school bus safety,(in a five year period 62,000 children were injured and 59 died from riding a school bus), or playground accidents (200,000 children are hurt each year in playground accidents.) When I read the long list of Ad Council donors, I found the list reveals so many corporations dependant on agriculture and agribusiness who I hope would be appalled to learn that their funds were supporting an extreme environmental agenda. I know Anheuser-Busch is greatly dependant on the hops and barley our farmers grow, I doubt Anheuser's stringent quality control would accept barley crawling with insects or an even worse scenario, destroyed by infestation. Ditto, McDonalds and their apple slices, Burger King, Merck and Company, Kraft Foods, Wendy's, Novartis , PGA of America , Major League Baseball Properties, (picture golf courses and ball parks without responsible pesticide application) Caterpillar, Home Depot, Good Year Tire and Rubber Company are others that should be aware that the Ad Council has crawled into the kangaroo pouch of environmentalists. Who better than an "AGtivist" to call the AD Council on this hypocrisy?