Come See How Excited Everyone Is For The Latest UK Educational 'Don't Pirate' Campaign (original) (raw)
from the sooooooo-excited dept
If you drop the search term “educational campaign” into the Techdirt search field, it’s crazy how many story links pop up. When it comes to educating the public, particularly the youth, about how super-important copyright is and how goddamned terrible pirating is, the effort appears to have been going on for forty years or so. Given how every indication from our pro-copyright friends and the entertainment industries have been of the “sky is falling” variety, I would have thought that there would be some acknowledgment that the whole educational campaign thing didn’t work. Or maybe that the lesson plan sucked. Some kind of recognition of failure.
If that’s the case, you sure wouldn’t know it hearing how pants-crappingly excited everyone over in the UK is for yet another round of educational nonsense coming from the entertainment industry.
The education programme will target 16-24 year-olds, their parents, those responsible for household internet connections, as well as others who influence young people’s attitudes to accessing content. To capture the attention of these audiences, public relations firm Weber Shandwick will lead an integrated consumer, corporate and social PR campaign, with activities scheduled to start later this summer. Creative Content UK is working with Atomic London on advertising creative. Media planning and buying will be directed by ZenithOptimedia.
The campaign is part of the Creative Content UK initiative, a ground-breaking partnership between content creators and Internet Service Providers (ISPs), together with an education campaign part-funded by the government, aimed at helping reduce online copyright infringement.
In other words, the public is footing part of the bill for letting the entertainment industries and ISPs tell them how great their products are and how horrible the bill-footing public is because piracy exists. And it will come from such organic methods like hiring PR and advertising firms. How could this possibly fail?
Well, probably the same way that the RIAA’s educational campaign failed. And the one that was done in Sweden failed. And the USPTO’s educational campaigns, too. They fail because they’re almost universally inaccurate and misleading propaganda hits that fail to connect with children far too savvy to fall for scare-tactics. Meanwhile, innovation stalls because the entertainment industry is busy reaping failure with the K-12 crowd.
But, still, that excitement.
Janis Thomas, Education Project Manager, Creative Content UK, said: “We are delighted to have three highly-experienced agencies on board to help us create disruptive and engaging multi-media campaigns that will connect with the aspirations of young people. This behaviour change initiative is vital to the success of the sector and will ensure that we can continue innovating and taking risks on new artists and ideas. We aim to inspire individuals to make a personal commitment to the future of the UK creative industries and to the creation of music, film, games and other entertainment, which they love so much.”
You just have to beat the buzzwords off with a stick, don’t you? Kids aren’t going to fall for this crap any more than they fell for the over-the-top anti-marijuana videos they showed my parents. But, hey, keep beating that dead horse if you want. Just keep it down; some of us are innovating over here.