Spare the Rod...

Giving shoes to needy children is a wonderful and moving marketing concept for Tom’s Shoes, and also AT&T. Good marketing works, and any mention reinforces a marketing message to strengthen a good campaign, so here’s a powerful response from (spoof) rival Rod’s Shoes:

Ah, Bless!

Thank God it’s Monday Morning?

Is your calling calling? I was deeply moved by this year’s Superbowl ad from Monster.com, an ad classic surely, that has not received the attention it deserves this side of the pond:

London Atheist ads: Shome mishtake?

I’m with Simon Barrow about the new London bus atheist poster ads campaign:

To those without a huge vested interest in promoting or dissing religion, this probably looks a slightly odd initiative. Frankly, the slogan is a bit anodyne. It's the non-believing equivalent of "God may very well exist. Now have a nice day". But it will probably still be enough to upset counter-evangelists of the kind who like to tell everybody they are going to hell for not subscribing to their particular doctrine, and who think atheism is very, very naughty.

I wonder what impact this kind of campaign has, though? It will appeal to those who like that kind of thing, no doubt. And in part it seems to have been born out of resentment towards comparatively prodigious (and extremely well-funded) religious advertising. But apart from raising brand awareness, I suspect that the vast majority of people will be as sceptical about being sold unbelief as they are about being sold belief. Well, unless someone is thinking of throwing in a free set of wine glasses or something.

Perhaps this particular ad is more agnostic than atheist, and we still have to await a genuinely atheist poster ad. The wording puts me in mind of a brilliantly funny song by the world’s first Atheist Gospel Singer, Susan Werner, which I sometimes play in the car for a chuckle.

Actually I suppose, like the ads, the song’s more agnostic than atheist, really. The humerous twist at the end is a refreshing break from the characteristic grinding pig ignorance associated with Dawkins and chums over here. Nothing in the ad isn’t in the Bible anyway — its line is characteristic of some strands in the Wisdom Tradition. And because God is implicit in everything, anything that raises the question actually helps people on their own journey towards him — as the sermon on the mount says, those who seek, find. It happens every day, and whilst these ads may well annoy people of a fundamentalist persuasion, they will raise a big question creatively for some people who might not have prayed Psalm 49 at a Cathedral evensong or read the book of Job recently...