Macleay College students team up with ghg to launch ‘no shark cull’ awareness campaign
Independent education provider Macleay College has partnered with Sydney agency, ghg, on a creative project around a campaign to build awareness on the controversial Shark Cull policy in Western Australia.
The policy, which has received a storm of media attention, employs an extreme approach to reducing fatal shark attacks. Macleay College advertising students joined the debate by working with account executives at ghg to prepare a campaign brief and then pitch concepts for a ‘No Shark Cull’ campaign to a panel of industry judges including, ghg creative director, Tim Brierley, The Greens member for Waverly, Dr Mejreen Faruqi and AAMI and Bingle executive manager, Richard Riboni. The winning team’s campaign encouraged people to think about the fact that taxpayer funds were contributing to the slaughter of sharks.
Says Brierley: “It’s always a breath of fresh air seeing new talent respond to a brief, and we saw some terrific ideas. The whole process is almost a masterclass interview and even at this early stage in their course, you could spot some real talent. The project connected students with advertising professionals in the real world, providing valuable insight into the workings of the ad world and how to build successful campaigns.”
Says Juliann Brooker, Macleay advertising lecturer: “There is no scientific evidence that killing sharks will reduce the already small number of shark attacks, and Macleay College students grabbed the opportunity to work on such an important issue with both hands. Our teams created no less than 20 original campaign ideas and logical strategic solutions, ones that were informed by research – unlike the Shark Cull policy. Our marketing industry ultimately depends on ideas, not Photoshop skills – team SOS’s campaign hinges on a great idea that we hope will win hearts and minds in Western Australia.”
1 Comment
I’m just wondering what the term ‘scientific evidence’ means. The practical (actual, real-life) results from QLD, NSW and KZN all show that shark attacks have reduced since shark mitigation programs were introduced. The independent Bond university report acknowledges that attacks reduced in the aforementioned areas and the environmentalists state that a 97% reduction in attacks has occurred in Recife, Brazil since the deployment of drumlines. The ‘weatherby’ report into the Hawaiian shark cull fails to account for the massive human population growth during their cull (their own results show that the chances of an individual being attacked reduced dramatically during the cull). Should peoples lives be put at risk based on scientific hypotheses or should we base our actions on real life experience?