When is an ad not an ad? When it's disavowed by the CDC. Ian Bogost had a little sit down with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about their ill-conceived anti-gaming ads. Yesterday, he bumped into someone at the CDC's Atlanta office who told him they ads were not officially part of the CDC's VERB Youth Media Campaign. Here's the deal:

Faye Wong, Director of the campaign, explained that the "Give your thumbs a rest" ads were indeed created by Saatchi & Saatchi New York, one of the agencies retained by CDC for the campaign. Saatchi even submitted the concepts to the CDC for consideration, but the CDC rejected them. "This is an ad that was never approved for use," explained Wong. "As with all advertising, the agency presents multiple concepts, and the rejected ones died, but this one has been released for reasons the CDC doesn't understand."
She further clarified that the ads were never moved forward to focus testing or media placement, and they never appeared in magazines like Teen People or the gaming magazines where other VERB ads ran. "VERB targets kids 9-13," explained Wong, "and it is aimed at getting those kids to become more physically active. We present kids with a range of 'verbs' and hope to get them motivated to run, swing, climb, swim—whatever makes them physically active." According to Wong, formal evaluation of the broader VERB campaign suggests that it has been effective.

Wong goes on to theorize that perhaps recent employee turnover at Saatchi led to the killed ad campaign making it into the wild. However it happened, it appears the leaked ads have soured the CDC on Saatchi.

"It raises a caution, whether with Saatchi or anyone else, that they should be aware that this mistake should never happen again. We have communicated to Saatchi that we are very unhappy about the release of these rejected print ad concepts."

Sure, the CDC didn't' approve the obnoxious ads, but let's face it, the images really get to the heart of what the CDC was trying to say. I wonder if the CDC realizes just how big a deal this is? Brian Crecente

CDC: We did not approve anti-gaming ads [Watercooler Games]

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