ALAC Responds to Complaint About "Lisa" Ad

I’ve been away from the keys most of the last week* and just before I waved a fond farewell to my hapless PC on Friday I received an email from ALAC. I scanned it, noted its amazing similarity to their online response to comments Joanna and I made at the ALAC blog, and then put it on my to do list for when I was back in Blogland.

Background to this can be found here (Maia's post about the victim blaming), here (my post on how to make a complaint), here (my official complaint) and here (an update on the issue). And here is ALAC's reply:

Subject: FW: Official Complaint "Lisa" advert response I am intending sending. Cheers Lynne

Message:
Kia ora Julie

Thank you for your email outlining your concern. I understand you see one of our recently launched advertisements as blaming women who are victims of crimes that occur when they have been binge drinking.

The message in all three of our advertisements is that binge drinking increases the risks of harm to yourself or harm to others. The advertisements however are not about blame. We have conducted a lot of focus group testing (including with young women who drink) to ensure that the take out message from these adverts is about increased risks from binge drinking. At ALAC we are very clear that while binge drinking does increase your risk of harm, this does not mean that if you are a victim of a crime while drunk that you are to blame. This point did test positively with our target audiences, that the advertisement was about highlighting real risks from drinking and not about apportioning blame.

However given the strong messages in the advertisements we did expect a range of responses from the general public. The feedback that we have received has reflected this broad range of responses. As well as receiving a considerable amount of support for tackling the difficult issue of the real impacts and costs of our binge drinking culture, we have also received some complaints that we have gone too far in the use of "shock tactics" and in particular that the ad showing harm to a child should not be viewed during the day. We have also received two complaints (as well as your phone call) about the ad showing a young women binge drinking. One of the complaints raised the same issue you did, while the other objected to the advertisement portraying men as predators. The Advertising Standards Authority has also received some complaints on our advertising, and we are expecting them to consider these complaints and make their decision at their meeting in May.

We have thought long and hard about our decision to develop such strong messages as seen in all three of our latest advertisements. There is a very real urgency to do something about changing New Zealand's binge drinking culture as it is creating an enormous amount of preventable harm. Research statistics from Police, Ministry of
Transport and hospital emergency services show that harms for women are
increasing and that if the trend continues they will start to outstrip males in terms of harms from alcohol use. These statistics are also supported by anecdotal information on trends from many of our partner organisations in health and social services who we shared the advertisements with prior to going to air.

Kind Regards

Gerard Vaughan
CEO ALAC

Their main arguments appear to be:

• The intended message of the advert is not to blame but to minimize harm.
• In focus groups, which included young women,** this main message was clearly absorbed.
• They have had very few complaints about the Lisa advert, both in absolute terms and in comparison to the Mark advert (which includes a child being thrown against a wall).
• The shock ad campaign is necessary due to the large amount of serious harm being done by binge drinking.

Sigh. More to come later on the guts of this disappointing response, in particular how they completely ignore my points about rape myths.

In regard to the number of complaints, the statement in their response is just plain wrong, as you can see in the comment thread to my last update on this issue. It’s a petty thing to focus on, and it isn’t my main point, but I do feel like they could put sufficient effort into their response to a) not so obviously cut and paste; b) respond to the arguments actually raised in the complaint (and that would also deal with point a); and c) not seek to incorrectly minimize the negative correspondence they’ve received on the issue. Is a little bit of savvy too much to ask for?

Anyway, I’m going to write back with a number of questions and additional points, but I need to take a few days to consider my response. In the meantime I’ve written a post on this concept of “the risk of harm” that ALAC seem so keen on (and it also covers the dilemma Anjum raised), and I’ll put it up once I finish proof-reading. I hope any feedback from readers on that post (and this one!) will help me to further crystallize my arguments before I write to ALAC again.

Please feel free to add your thoughts in comments, I will be very interested to read them. Have any of the others who wrote complaints had responses? Are they any different from the form response I’ve had?

Oh, and I haven’t heard anything from the ASA yet.


* Thank goodness for Blogger’s new scheduling tool, foiling burglars and garden arsonists since 2008.
** I’m not sure why “young women” are specifically mentioned. After all it isn’t only young women who get raped, in fact it isn’t even only women who get raped. And not everyone who has expressed their concern about the Lisa advert fits into the “young woman” demographic. I’m not sure I do myself these days.