Ok. . . a teachable moment thanks to an ad campaign that we can talk about with our kids. . . and this is the kind of thing we do here at CPYU and we encourage you to do in an effort to better understand the current cultural landscape. . . both who we are and who we’re being influenced to become. And, what follows is not my commentary on Obamacare. Rather, It’s simply an observation.
Perhaps you’ve heard me say in the past that the best cultural exegetes and analysts out there are marketers. They are constantly stirring up the cultural soup to figure out who we are, what drives us, and how to push our buttons to get us to take note and then take action. . . usually through spending large amounts of our time, allegiance, and money. In other words, if you take the time to monitor the worldview messages embedded in advertising, you’re taking the time to get at the heart and soul of who we are, what we believe, and how we are choosing to live in the world. Therefore, as we fulfill our responsibility to exegete the culture so that we can bring the Word to bear on the world, we need to listen to what the marketers say about who we are, along with who they are telling us to be. Culture is a map (telling us where to go) and a mirror (showing us where we’ve gone).
So yesterday, someone emailed me a link to an ad campaign from the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative. We couldn’t figure out whether the campaign was an elaborate over-the-top hoax or legit. It’s for real.
The “got insurance?” campaign targets young Coloradans, encouraging them to sign up for healthcare through the Obamacare initiative. The ads are both map and mirror. You can view all the ads in the campaign here. More specifically, what do the three ads I’ve posted below tell us about ourselves? What do you think? This is worth pondering and talking about with your kids. . . .