Media. The right and the not-so-right.

I like creative advertising.

It gives a certain inspiration to achieve something like that, or to give a massive effect on your target audience. As a media practitioner, I view things differently from the others.

When does creativity stops and the right thing steps in?

A recent TV commercial  of the giant food chain McDonald's here in the Philippines got pulled out of the air because the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) find it misleading.

 

In the commercial, the girl ask the boy about girl friend. the boy wittingly answered that girls are complicated and demanding and he don't want to have one, the girl then reacts and said that all she wants is fries.

In an artist point of view, I don't find this misleading, the term girl friend can be defined as simply, a girl friend, or if the kid answered about relationship matter it can be a puppy love. The kids did not even kiss, hold hands or even said anything that is not right. Yet they still axed the ad.

Why?

From the online news it was said that the culprit is  Caloocan Bishop Deogracias Iniguez who was quoted as saying that the commercial “could give the wrong message to children that it’s all right to enter into a courtship, and it could pave the way for the very young to be lax and carefree.”

Maybe ? He has a point right, but that is simply an opinion but not a fact. But since we live in a Catholic driven country, this people are the next powerful forces above even the state.

When it comes to this matter, the church have the right to speak, but not command and alter the law.

The ad did not violate any law.

Viewers are not dumb.

Online rants and views arise as soon as people learned about the issue a  clear sign that viewers knows what they are talking, based on the online news on Wednesday, thousands of Twitter posts tagged #mcdo and #CBCP contained reactions by Filipinos on the issue. 

Just to note, there are a lot of ad that should be pulled out, this one is not on the list.




so cheers!