Hair-raising
TV spot shunned
by broadcasters

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Kari Huus

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The keys to the kingdom
However, by way of comparison, Barnett says most of the spots his company produces are used.

UNICEF — the United Nations Children's Fund — has scored major successes with its PSAs, particularly those that parallel major news events. Following the tsunami in December, for instance, the United Nations prepared a 30-second PSA seeking donations for the victims.

"Within days, all the networks responded favorably," says Marissa Buckanoff, a UNICEF spokeswoman. "ABC fed it to their entire list of affiliates. Others put it in a regular rotation. CNN International, who always respond favorably to U.N. PSAs, aired the spot continually."

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"Whatever the images are (in UNICEF spots), they are bold and optimistic," says Buckanoff. "We want to show the hope, and the work. Those are our guidelines."

While the soccer spot appears doomed to fail to reach the massive American television audience, it has circulated widely on alternative news sites and has been featured in Internet discussion groups after Advertising Age ran a small item on it on Feb. 28. Barnett says some 80,000 users visited the Brooklyn Brothers site in March — far more than the normal monthly count of a few thousand — because of controversy surrounding the land mine spot, which his company produced on a pro bono basis.

"The interesting thing about the Internet is that you realize that you’re not necessarily beholden to broadcast networks to get a message across," says Barnett. "More and more, it seems that a lot of people have the high bandwidth needed to watch it."

Spot debated online
Among those who have seen the soccer spot on the Internet, passionate debate has ensued — as much about the role of mainstream media as about the problem of land mines.

"Those same corporate behemoths won't run the ad because it would wake people up. ... It would generate real passion, create energy outside the control of the behemoth thingie," writes Wintermane in a bulletin board discussion on Worldchanging.com, which dedicates itself to "alternative topics."

Phaethor writes: "Wow! If that was shown every morning on a major television network nationwide during everyone's morning breakfast and news hour, I bet we'd get more support for banning mines worldwide. again... Wow!"

Gut-level: Yuck
But an anonymous author called the ad "arrogant" and said it "implies we don't care; this ad would only piss people off instead of making them give more; really, what were they thinking?"

Even some sympathizers expressed a gut-level reaction that might cause a spot like the soccer PSA to backfire.

"YUCK," responded a professional woman with two children after viewing the spot online. "They definitely should not run it."

"If my kids saw that, I would be furious," wrote Susan Kittleson, another high-level professional with two children. "We don’t watch the evening news as I think they are careless about the images that they expose families to during prime time. ... There are ways to communicate a message that are equally as powerful as terror and less terrifying for a young child to see."

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