Random Thoughts about Consider Humanism
Yesterday the American Humanist Association launched their big multimedia campaign. I think it is a great time to talk briefly about their campaign and about where the focus of these groups should be going. If you haven’t heard about this campaign please check out my Examiner article on it.
For starters, I have been critical of the AHA’s Billboard advertisements, but was told that they were more of an after thought. The main campaign is the print ads. Those ads are pretty good for print, but I think the Islamic quotes are useless unless they are put next to Biblical quotes. The Billboards are far too wordy. In order for them to be strong effective billboard ads they should only have 7 or 8 words so that they can be easily read while someone is driving past. I am also not a fan of the commercials. They don’t really capture people’s attention.
The campaign itself however is pretty good. I like the general idea of it, but think they could probably have found better quotes. Maybe I am nitpicking here. The important thing is that we are out there.
It seems that advertising campaigns like this one tend to be done on a more national level and I think atheist groups should do more of these things on a more local level too. The UnitedCoR campaign had the right idea by funding a campaign that supports the local groups. For example, many of the larger national atheist groups have local chapters. The AHA for example has a local Philly chapter called The Humanist Association of Greater Philadelphia (HAGP). Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) also has a local chapter here, although the Freethought Society is growing to be a more national group in their own right. The point is that we need to get more people involved on the local levels as well as the larger national groups.
Related articles
- Atheists’ Holiday Message – Join Us (nytimes.com)
- Humanist group launches national ad campaign (seattlepi.com)
- Humanist advertising campaign launches in America (newhumanist.org.uk)
- Consider Humanism: The Largest Atheist Ad Campaign In History (friendlyatheist.com)
- Consider Humanism [Pharyngula] (scienceblogs.com)
- FFRF debuts ‘Out of the Closet/Meet Your Friendly Neighborhood Atheist/Agnostic’ campaign (secularnewsdaily.com)
Filed under: atheism, billboards, culture war, humanism, Media, People of Reason