The motive is the message

I never intended to be particularly negative on this blog, and I think so far I've tried to be at least constructive if I've been having a go at something. Hopefully I can keep this up for this post!

I've noticed a few little poster campaigns recently that have made me think a lot about how messages work as outward reflections of the source of the message. Not really anything to do with 'medium is the message', more like just examining the message as the message. Before I waffle too much more, here's an example you've probably seen yourself at some point:

It's a banner saying 'improving the image of construction'. The question I have with these particular posters is this - as a member of the public, shouldn't you (the builder) be improving your image to me, rather than telling me that you're doing it? Wouldn't it be better to say 'this site has a waste management policy', or 'a noise policy', or 'we don't whistle at passing women' rather than telling me that you're improving your image?

To me, that message, 'improving the image of construction' would work, say, on an internal noticeboard on the subject, or on letterheads, but, personally, I think it completely misses the point when displayed for the general public. What do you think?

And so to my next poster, in a similar vein:

I can't read the small print now, but it says something like 'this poster campaign has been designed to inform and inspire discussion and debate'

I'm not sure I can really decide where to start.

There's another part to the campaign: once you have seen the above posters, you'll be checking your 'student portal' (which happens A LOT) and you'll see a link to the student centred learning wiki:

If you click on that bottom image you may be able to see that someone's commented on the poster - "The impact is strong and it has something clear to say"

What?!!!!

What is it saying? Who is it saying it to? Why is it saying it? What are we meant to do with it?

Oops sorry back to the point of the blog which was to say - this is another example of an internal process or statement of aims being told to an external audience, when really they should be getting a message that has a call to action that will fulfill those aims.

It must be pretty easy to become product/production oriented when you're working in a given environment all the time - but campaigns like these will hopefully keep reminding me that one really needs to keep the end user/viewer in mind, otherwise you've wasted your time.

I should add, if you're reading, Learning Teaching and Development Unit, that you've got away lightly in this post. I think your poster campaign is really not very good. Even after reading through all your wikis I'm still none the wiser, but maybe this was a campaign for tutors? It would make a little more sense then. But if so, why is it on student noticeboards? I'm really confused.