Boone Oakley created a poster campaign and stickers for hospitals to encourage, and help, new mothers to nurse. The first to adopt them is Women and Babies Hospital, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The stickers, which look like those stickers you might find on fruits and vegetables, carry slogans like "the best nutrition for your baby is you" and "100% natural", but they're not just a gimmick says Boone Oakley. They're meant to serve as a memory aid to attach on the breast after nursing, so as to remember which breast you nursed from last. Hey, when you're running on bloodloss, lack of sleep and massive hormone shock after giving birth you might need a little help in the memory department, so I can see where the idea came from. That said, nobody will be putting these on their breasts as depicted in the posters, and there's nursery rhyme mnemonics that help us remember in most languages.
The model casting asked for nursing or pregnant women, who weren't professional models. Anatomically, Boone Oakley were looking for full, natural, breasts, not surgically "perfect" ones. It took them a while too, as they explain there was a "wall covered with hundreds of breasts" that had to be hastily removed before client visits in their office.
While I applaud both the model selection, and the memory aid idea is a practical one I can see being useful, I'm not sure sure photos of boobs helps women choose nursing. We all already know it's best for our babies, the hurdle is to get the nursing started and that's where hospital information and help fails. Here's yet another campaign that's not addressing that issue. But now you'll have great tits in your agency portfolio, so I guess that's good?
Ad agency: Boone Oakley
Photography: Greg Slater
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Excellent post. Seeing nipple on my G+ feed certainly got my attention, but even as a committed breastfeeding advocate, the gimmick leaves me cold.
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PermalinkI was literally helping a friend of mine just the other week get past a few of the early nursing issues they don't tell you about, anywhere. If you're gonna do a pro-breastfeeding campaign, give out a pamphlet with the tricks that help women get past the starting difficulties. Have nursing nurses visit new moms to help. Etc. There's not a lack of will from new mothers, I've literally not met a single mother who didn't try, but someone needs to show us how. Most women give up because they fail to latch and think due to this that they're not producing milk. This isn't an advertising job, this is a nurse/midwives job. all IMHO and based on my experience, of course. Perhaps research on the east coast USA told them different.
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PermalinkI am amazed that we can find breast feeding taboo. It's one of the few natural thing from out ancestors we still do. And the #1 best thing you can do for your baby. We can watch porn in HD on our phones now but we take offense to breatfeeding. That blows my mind. My son turns 2 in april and my spouse breastfeeds him at night still. Exclusively breastfeed until 1. That's a amazing woman. If someone every said anything to her in public, I would loose my mind. More power to the breastfeeding moms.
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