A Norwegian girl named Thea started a blog about her upcoming wedding. In the blog she discusses dresses, menus and venues and the man she is about to marry, Geir. Thea also speaks of how sad she is that her friends are not allowed to come to the wedding, but that she needs to grow up since she will be having children of her own soon. Thea is 12, and her husband-to-be is 37.
Of course, Thea’s blog is a campaign. But for many the first clue is in the location, Norway, rather than in the unrealistic thought of a 12 year old girl getting married to a 37 year old man. Sadly, this is because child brides are custom in large parts of the world.
The campaign was launched by Plan, an international organisation working on strengthening girls’ rights, in order to draw attention to this occurrence. It is undoubtedly a successful campaign if its aim was to catch the eye of the global press. From an academic point of view, the campaign has some interesting elements to it which probably contributed to its success:
– First of all, it has the shock factor: before the secret was out this stirred up emotions to say the least. This made the campaign “go viral”.
– It is a classic example of personalisation. This issue feels distant to many of us but when it’s happening to a girl from the west, it gets very personal. Indeed, the signal is that anyone of us could have been Thea.
– The wedding was supposed to take place on October 11 which happens to coincide with the UN’s International Day of the Girl Child. This is an example of strategic timing and how a campaign can “ride” on other organisations’ attention. Looking from a PR-angle, the two happenings combined could make the story newsworthy for the media.
Hence, from a PR-point of view, this campaign was successful. If it can be considered ethical is another one, for two reasons. Firstly, it is simply awful that the practice doesn’t get this much attention until it concerns a white western girl, and Plan is using that fact to create the personalisation effect. Whether or not it is OK to tap into that is questionable. What is most striking about this campaign is not that people care about girls’ rights around the world, but that beneficiaries have to be white in order for a campaign to “go viral”. If it is ethical to use this fact depends on whether or not the end justifies the means, and in this case I believe it does not. Raising awareness, as this campaign aims to do, can be done using human interest stories that are actually true. That would take the edge of the western-centric approach that this campaign is permeated by.
Secondly, using Thea’s sad face amplifies the notion of the South as the Other; uncivilised, unsympathetic, incomprehensible. It creates a gap between ‘our practices” and ‘their practices’. Instead of bringing the issue into ‘our’ context the campaign could have attempted to bring us there, and seek to paint a more holistic picture of the problem. That is another reason why real life human interest stories could have been a better alternative.
What do you think of this campaign? Is a campaign successful if it reaches Western media and Westerner’s hearts? Does the end justify the means here?
Read more on this story here.
SusannaJertel 