The Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign failed because the formula industry
launched a full frontal attack to ensure its failure, not because the
campaign was flawed. The campaign, like all Ad Council campaigns, was
brilliant in its original design. If the Department of Health and Human
Services had allowed the original Breastfeeding Awareness Campaign to be
seen by the public as massively as other Ad Council campaigns, the
series of ads promised to change American attitudes about breastfeeding,
just as other Ad Council campaigns changed public perception of forest
fires ( the old Smokey the Bear series "only you can prevent forest
fires"), drunk driving ("friends don't let friends drive drunk"), racism
("a mind is a terrible thing to waste"), and seat belts ("you can learn
a lot from a dummy"). The Ad Council has had an uncanny ability to
change American attitudes and behaviors. 

 

Criticizing the Breastfeeding Awareness campaign at this juncture is to
completely forget recent history. The Infant Formula Council hired the
former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under the first President Bush to
act as a Republican Lobbyist to ensure that the current Bush
administration would quash the campaign. The infant formula industry was
so threatened by this well-designed campaign they did not want it to see
the light of day. They largely succeeded in this effort. This has all
been documented by the Washington Post, the New York Times, the
Philadelphia Inquirer, and ABC News.

 

Let's direct our frustration over this campaign's failure at the
appropriate source: Bush administration appointees who sided with the
formula industry over infants' health, not the ad agency that donated
their time pro bono to increase American breastfeeding rates.

 

Jackie Wolf


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