McCann-Erickson Manchester has created a powerful national press
campaign for Marie Stopes International, the global health and family
planning agency, which draws attention to the 600,000 women who die
annually as a result of preventable pregnancy and childbirth-related
causes.
The first execution shows a wire coathanger that has been pulled apart
to create a harmful-looking implement. The headline reads: ’When
abortion isn’t an option, some women have a stab at it anyway.’ A
second, which shows a nailed wooden cross on top of a mound of earth,
reads: ’Many women find that sex makes the earth move.’
Next to the headlines, the copy outlines some of the gruesome facts
behind the campaign - that ’20 million women submit to unsafe abortion
every year’ or that ’in many parts of Asia and Africa, there is only one
midwife for every 15,000 births’.
Marie Stopes International commissioned the campaign to mark the tenth
anniversary of the Safe Motherhood Initiative, which looks unlikely to
achieve its stated objective of reducing maternal mortality by 50 per
cent by 2000.
Tony Kerridge, the public affairs officer for Marie Stopes, said: ’Our
intention in commissioning these advertisements is to prompt a debate on
issues which, for far too long, have been largely overlooked or ignored
by the general public.’
The ads were written by Neil Lancaster and art directed by David Price.
Price said: ’The subjects are uncomfortable and so is the typography,
the copy, the whole visual framework. Advertising of this nature has to
stand out and the headlines are deliberately confrontational.’
