In a controversial effort to promote the use of condoms among young men, Age Isobar created a Facebook campaign which involved the creation of baby profiles that were then used to send friend requests to young men. The friend request came with the text, “Avoid surprises like this one. Use Olla Condoms.”
One one hand, this is an ingenious way to literally frighten young men into buying condoms. After all, if you’re not ready to have a child the notion of having one is pretty scary. On the other hand, some have taken issue with the campaign calling it a breach of Facebook’s TOS (babies aren’t 13 years old) and dubbing it spam.
Of the campaign, one commenter wrote, “Wow, you have officially brought social media advertising down to a whole new low. Not only is this campaign highly unethical, but it also violates Facebook’s TOS. The fact that you seem to be proud of this speaks volumes about your professional ethics and knowledge.”
Another who, in a way supports the approach, wrote, “it isn’t illegal, it’s TOS which has no weight behind it other then saying they can do X Y Z if you don’t abide by it, anyway kids are getting on this social networking junk all the time.”
So which is it? Brilliant marketing or rule-bending spam?
