Raditect ad denounced by Slate

[Susan Gawarecki <loc@icx.net>]

The antinuclear crowd isn't the only one exploiting middle America's

fear of things radioactive....



--Susan Gawarecki



Is Cantor Fitzgerald exploiting 9/11?

ad report card Rob Walker, Jul 15, 2002, 8:21 AM

See http://g.msn.com/0NL34064/3095 for full article



Not long after Sept. 11, Ad Report Card looked at various examples of

marketing gambits that seemed, at best, opportunistic. (We followed up

with this column and with reader reactions.) The normalcy pendulum has

swung quite a bit since those days, but the debate over mixing Sept.

11 and commercial messages lingers. One series of ads that has gotten

attention—and criticism—on this front comes from Cantor Fitzgerald, the

bond brokerage firm that lost many employees in the attacks on the World

Trade Center. ... Another campaign that's gotten a lot less attention

than one might have thought is for a product called Raditect, which you

can see via Ads.com (you'll need either Windows Media Player or the

Realplayer). Viewed together, the campaigns make it clear just how

cynical post-Sept. 11 advertising can get—and that, particularly

compared to Raditect, Cantor Fitzgerald has nothing to be ashamed of. 



The Cantor ads: <snip>



The Raditect ad: This spot opens with black-and-white footage of a

mystery man getting out of a car and clutching a metal briefcase. An

ominous voice-over begins: "Next time, it may not happen from jetliners

smashing into concrete and steel." Next we're shown a happy family, Dad

playing with the kids as Mom beams from the kitchen. "But when it

comes"—we see the mystery man again, then a shot of a nuclear

reactor—"whether from a dirty bomb, nuclear accident, or even an

earthquake that produces radiation, you won't have time to rush out and

buy this remarkable early-warning system that could save you and your

family's lives." A product shot shows a small black box with lights,

which start flashing as a string of shrill beeps bleat forth, before we

again cut back to mystery man, who is opening his briefcase, which

apparently contains a scary bomb. Now we see the ad's narrator, a

reassuringly gray-haired man sitting in an office behind a big desk with

an American flag at hand, as he tells us to take down a toll free number

("it's important") and introduces us to Raditect, "the first affordable

radiation detector for your home, car, or office." As he explains,

vaguely, how Raditect is able to warn us of radiation "long before it's

on the news," we see the happy family scrambling out of the house in

response to the urgent beeping. "It delivers the head start you need to

safely avoid the panic and the horror of radiation." Finally we're told

that it costs $149 and that we can learn more at the Web site

www.homelandprotection.net, as we see closing footage of an SUV zooming

down a remote and empty highway—presumably the happy family fleeing to

safety. 



Exploiting your fears? Now this is an ad that crosses the line. Set

aside the almost certainly preposterous nature of the product itself.

Whether you agree that the Cantor commercial has at its core some

genuine feeling, you can't deny that this spot is built on the exact

opposite. It's an incredible exercise in phoniness—some vaguely

authoritative guy at his desk, which is probably on a sound stage and

decorated with rented props; the cartoonish family bugging out and

presumably one-upping the Joneses and everyone else by being the only

escapees on the block; the evocation of "horror" and, ironically enough,

"panic" avoidance in the course of a scare-mongering rant; the unsubtle

nod to "homeland protection" in the related Web address (isn't Raditect

more about "homeland escape"?). Has any advertiser to date so blatantly

tried to cash in on the base fears of customers? In all, a thoroughly

shameful exercise.

************************************************************************

You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To unsubscribe,

send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu  Put the text "unsubscribe

radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail, with no subject line.

You can view the Radsafe archives at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/