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Campaign targets Cricket Australia demanding healthier advertising

2013-11-20 London Agency-106An organisation concerned about the way Australians are targeted by alcohol, junk food and gambling advertising through sport has taken aim at Cricket Australia with a billboard campaign demanding healthy advertising in cricket.

The Game Changer advertisement, located outside Hobart airport, features a young boy dressed in cricket whites in a typical Aussie backyard holding a schooner of beer in one hand and a burger in the other, with the slogan ‘What is Cricket Australia selling your family?’

The outdoor campaign, created pro bono by Melbourne healthcare and social issues specialists, London Agency, is supplemented with an online and social media presence.

London Agency client services director, John Emmerson said in a statement: “The creative is meant to be confronting and a little unsettling. Every Cricket Australia fixture this summer will be promoting unhealthy products and are we really ok with that? When you watch old cricket matches from the 80s the abundance of tobacco advertising is almost laughable that it was allowed. In time I’m sure we’ll also think the same way about alcohol, gambling and junk food advertising in major sports codes.”

Gamechanger founder Aaron Schultz says this is just the beginning in a long campaign.

He said in a statement: “We need to find alternatives to fast food, alcohol and gambling in sport. That’s what Game Changer is all about. Australian parents deserve to sit down and watch a game of cricket with their children without their young and impressionable kids being exposed to a barrage of alcohol and fast food advertisements. Cricket Australia is not the only guilty party, and I’d like to put thecountry’s other major sporting codes on notice. We’re coming after you too.”

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