Joanne McNeil links to a series of free press shock ads put out by French ad gurus Saatchi & Saatchi.

They’re certainly provocative, and if adapted to the States would generate lots of coverage — imagine an ad featuring, say, Barbara Walters with her throat slashed. And if you pick the right media figures — Michael Savage or Paul Begala, for example — you could end up triggering warm and fuzzy feelings in some of us, not shock and revulsion.

Ultimately, it seems to me that the campaign has lots of moxie, but little motivation. Who exactly is the audience? And what do the ads advocate we do?

I’d say a pretty healthy majority of us already support a free press. And those who don’t probably aren’t open to persuasion.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2003 at 5:00 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.