Gangsta Love
If you do not already consider gangster sign language during the creative planning stage of your campaign’s development, you may want to reconsider. Virginia Tourism Corp learned this lesson the hard way after spending $400,000 in creative development for their “Live Passionately” campaign. The print campaign includes an image of a woman making a hand gesture of a heart. This same hand gesture is also used by the Gangster Disciples (and clearly they’ve trademarked it). Therefore, VTC has decided to remove this gesture from the imagery in their campaign so as not to condone the gangsta lifestyle (this is my interpretation; exact rationale has been made public on the VTC’s website).
Question: When did gangster sign language become so powerful that the rest of the world decided to claim defeat on ever using their forefingers and thumbs to create a heart? What other symbolism can a hand-shaped heart gesture have? Can this gesture really be misconstrued to mean anything other than love? And, I don’t know too much about gangs but isn’t one of their core strengths the fact that you can find brotherly love there when the rest of the world has failed you? So, wouldn’t it be logical to think that perhaps we’re all using this gesture in the same manner, to express the same intention – love? I’d like to consider this a multi-cultural breakthrough, no?
The good news for VTC is that their campaign hasn’t officially launched. They discovered this sign language controversy during a soft launch of the campaign so there was time to modify the campaign. Phew!
Posted by Marrianne on August 22nd, 2007
Filed under Advertising, Fun, Marketing | No Comments »
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