Friday, June 14, 2013

My response to the Irish Examiner Limerick Crime Scene Ad UPDATE

At the beginning of June the Irish Examiner newspaper ran a billboard ad campaign promoting a crime data supplement they were due to publish the following week, comparing crime statistics across the counties of Ireland. The supplement was published yesterday. To highlight this crime supplement, they put up a series of billboard ads in the six counties of Munster, each featuring a location in each county, with yellow crime scene tape in front of it, and the loaded question on top of the photo, asking "Just how safe is ....?" the particular county.

The Marketing Department of the Irish Examiner thought it was a good idea to feature crime scene across a tourist landmark in their Limerick one, while Cork and Waterford featured photos of their main streets, which are similar to generic main streets in any town in Ireland (at least in the photos anyway - don't get me wrong, I love the real Patrick Street in Cork) while the Limerick one highlighted one of our main tourist attractions.

The photos used in the other three counties highlight rural attractions, which I don't think people would associate with crime in any event.



It probably generated such a negative response in Limerick because Limerick people are sick of being lazily stereotyped by outsiders. There are many people and organisations working hard to improve this city, and having this billboard outside the train station, as the first thing that many visitors would see on getting off the train, could only serve to undermine the hard work and morale of those who work hard to improve the city.
For the record, here is what I sent to the ASAI:

I think this ad was neither honest nor decent. It has already caused offence without showing any evidence to support the negative image of Limerick it portrays. The ad shows yellow crime scene tape in front of King John's Castle, a landmark tourist attraction, and has a tag line asking if Limerick is safe. The imagery and way the question is asked imply that it isn't a safe place, which is an opinion based on lazy stereotypes, rather than CSO data.

It's hard to know what motivated the Irish Examiner to put this ad on a billboard outside Limerick's train station.

Do they want to scare visitors away? (Hardly a good idea: the whole country is in the worst recession in ages, and tourism is one of the areas of the Irish economy that could help the recovery.)

Do they want to damage the morale of all the people who work tirelessly to make Limerick a better place? (Hardly a nice thing to do.)

Do they want to perpetuate lazy offensive stereotypes? (Hardly a sign of good journalism.)

Do they want to lose readers? (Hardly good business practice.)

Are they genuinely concerned about the socio-economic circumstances that lead to crime all over Ireland? (Hardly.)

Here is a photograph of the billboard ad in question:


The ad outside the train station was put up in the evening, and by early morning had been torn down by a member of the public.

In the immediate aftermath of the advertisement controversy, I asked a Senior Reporter with the newspaper if he knew why his employer had made the decision to publicise their company in the way they did, and his response was telling:

"Quite simply I haven't a clue but I've long since given up on trying to get into the head of marketing people everywhere."

A picture paints a thousand words. And people are much more likely to form a negative impression of a place based on a picture like the one above, rather than a series of dry data tables, which, thankfully, show that overall crime levels have been falling across Ireland over the past number of years.