Maria Arpa
This week
Let them eat cake
Plus…
Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness
and
The Wednesday Whisper
A rant about the ridiculous
In 2019 Transport for London placed a ban on adverts promoting ‘the consumption of high fat, salt and sugar foods’. I’m not commenting on the policy. It is what it is. But I honestly think the world has gone insane, or at least the senior management team of TFL have lost all sense of proportion, when a West End dinner theatre show created an advert for a play called Tony and Tina’s Wedding and used the image of a giant wedding cake on its poster, and TFL banned the poster as breeching its policy.
Call me petty, or old, but for the life of me I cannot get my head round it. They are not selling cake, they are not promoting the eating of high fat, high sugar food, you cannot buy the cake in the advert, they are using easily recognisable symbolism of a wedding just like the opening credits for the Netflix show Frankie and Grace.
The ‘rules is rules’ argument represents a distinct lack of balance and discretion. Banning the ad is not the answer. Changing the policy to prevent advertisers and adverts that are promoting or selling the ‘bad’ food, is a better solution.
OK so, why am I worried about the shallow world of advertising? It’s something about the way people use ‘rules’ in any context that fascinates me.
Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness
The DRM teaches us that context and intentions are important, and that one size fits all policies are not the answer.
The Wednesday Whisper
When has a person waving a one-size-fits-all, rules are rules, policy at you rendered you powerless?
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