Mic Mac Mall Back to School Campaign

Recently the Mic Mac Mall in Nova Scotia laucnhed an ad campaign aimed at their young shoppers - namely the young girls. The ads depicted carcitures of young girls with tag lines like "Social Studies? Does posting my new boots on Facebook count?" and "My favorite class? Shop!"

Not only are these ads highly sexist, they also display what the marketing world thinks a young girl's mentality is like - or should be. Apparently to Suburbia Advertising - the agency responsible for creating this campaign - young girls care more about shopping than they do about school or getting an education. While its true that a majority of the mall going demographic is young girls, I feel that the ads could have been displayed in a different way - preferably in a non-sexist and non-demeaning way.

Its also baffling that, while it claims to be a "back to school" campaign, no young men were targeted in the ads. Why was it neccesary to only single out girls? Why not also target the young men? Most likely if the young men were also targeted, the campaing would not have recieved as much publicity, even though the message would still have been demeaning.

I think the agency wanted publicity for its client, and was fully aware of what it was doing. Their facebook page includes the same type of ads but with different tag lines - why could these not have been the ones to be printed and displayed at the mall? Even though an apology was issued, the mall still got its publicity. Mic Mac Mall did issue an apology, but the campaign has hurt the brand and created mistrust with its shoppers/consumer base. But still, negative publicity is still publicity, and this campaign helped the mall gain its 15 minutes of fame.