The furor and debate surrounding an advertisement for the WWF (the Wildlife Federation not the wrestling organization) produced by DDB Brazil is growing at an almost exponential rate. Amusingly enough, my introduction to this advertisement came via a particularly irate Keith Olberman this evening not Ad Age.

The debate:

DDB Brazil’s ad depicts lower Manhattan with more than 100 airplanes pointed at buildings, including the Twin Towers. The ad copy reads: ”The tsunami killed 100 times more people than 9/11. The planet is brutally powerful. Respect it. Preserve it.” Needless to say, the WWF rejected the ad but DDB Brazil forgot to remove their logo from their test prints. The ad has begun to spread around the Internet with enough speed that the WWF felt compelled to issue a statement against it. This is a hot mess, but fortunately (unfortunately?) DDB is no stranger to controversial advertisements.

Admittedly, I am drawn to work that’s provocative in nature, so the use of the 9/11 in this advertisement does not bother me. I do, however, believe in shock with substance and the ad copy for this ad clearly lacks it. DDB Brazil could have made a stronger argument against critiques of bad taste and judgment if they used stronger ad copy. Unfortunately, they didn’t and now right-wing pundits have license to call environmentalists anti-American and ignorant in matters of national security. Great.

There’s another line of reasoning in the “DDB Brazil’s ad is anti-American and stupid” argument that really grates on me: the argument against the use or invocation of 9/11 as a visual/cultural symbol in advertisements. There is something very troubling about this to me, something almost authoritarian in the desire to prevent the use of 9/11 as a cultural symbol. Let me be clear here, I am not suggesting that advertisers should have license to use 9/11 as a cultural reference point whenever it’s convenient the way some, cough, politicians do in their campaigns.

I am, however, saying that it is acceptable to use 9/11 as a visual reference point if it’s relevant to the product or brand and has the potential to communicate a truly powerful, important point. 9/11 was a historical tragedy but it is just that: a historical event that was the product of a numerable social and political factors and is no more or less impactful than other large scale historical tragedies. Treating 9/11 as more special than other historical tragedies diminishes their cultural and social impact. Historical tragedies are not to be used lightly, an obvious but apparently overlooked point.

Tragic events imbue themselves into collective national and international psyches and as such are already invoked by those who survive after them by virtue of their existence; historical tragedy is, as some critical theorists argue, part of a historical present moment. To invoke a tragedy via visual symbolism is not necessarily a crime or in poor taste. To do so without vision or substance is. It’s on this point that DDB Brazil’s campaign fails.

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