Why don't we air commercials to counter autism speaks?

Post Reply New Topic

I was thinking about this the other day after having watched an Autism Speaks commercial on the tube. They were doing some rant about prenatal testing for Autism, or something to that effect. Why don’t we make commercials to combat theirs?

Seriously, why don’t we come together to finance it or something and ask Alex to support televised commercials discrediting groups like Autism Speaks while simultaneously endorsing wrong planet?

We’ve probably got all the talent we need on this website to piece it together, and if we could just raise the money it could be a useful tool in fighting back.

What do you all think? Alex, if you happen to stumble upon this thread what do you think?

I think it would be nice but they'd probably sue the people involved for slander somehow.

VERY simple answer on this one. Money. Alex even has a hard time keeping this site itself going. Note the large DONATE button in gold on your left...

<--

There is no way we can field the tens to hundreds of thousands for a commerical spot. What is working against us is difficulty with employment. What is working for them is parental hope that their children can be cured. It's obvious which makes more money.

Not if everything you say in the video is true. And according to Wikipedia, there are quite a few applicable defenses for such an allegation as well.

There are already YouTube users doing this (including ones run by ASAN), but making a YouTube video is cheap 'n' easy for anyone with a camera and a half decent computer.

To air a TV ad, you'd need to do a lot more. You'd need to get TV cameras, hire a studio, do professional editing, then pay for the advertising space on TV channels. It's all very time consuming and expensive.

Though, actually, I think ads just to badmouth Autism Speaks wouldn't do anything. A charity such as ASAN just needs to have the funding to be able to produce an ad showing their own point of view. That'd do some good.

The reason you hear about Autism Speaks so much is because they raise huge amounts of money every year and spend huge amounts on media campaigns.

The people who founded AS had some connections that helped them rope in big-name people like Jerry Seinfeld et al to help them raise money. And now they've established themselves as "the" autism organization from their massive media exposure, their popularity keeps growing. It's a money game, and a marginalized population won't have enough to compete.

Yeah good point. I thought about that right after the thread post. It wouldn’t take all that much money to air a commercial though if you were able to make the commercial yourself. I checked into it before whenever I still had a running website, and for a slot of five channels aired five different times *basically 25 showings of your commercial nation wide* would cost a little less than $4,000 at the time. The price apparently changes seasonal, and it‘s sure to be a tad bit more expensive here recently. I forget the place that was going to do it, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find them again.



All too true. Perhaps if we kept the bad mouthing at a minimum it’d be ok? Like if we said something like “Autism Speaks doesn‘t speak for me” as a slogan or something that’d be all the bad mouthing needed. We could focus the commercial around wrong planet or some other organization that’s legit in a short segment revolved around misconceptions and use that slogan at the end.

What do you think? Input?



The odds are against anything other than Autism Speaks indeed. They truly are THE autism organization even though they shouldn’t be, but… They can be beaten.

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network already created a very nice commercial:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_dPZDcX_ck[/youtube]

Ah. Either you're not serious, someone was trying to take advantage of you, or you looked it up back in 1948. Currently, you can't even think about breaking national without a $200,000 outlay* and all of the slots are already taken by advertising agencies (meaning you must go through them). That's why you don't see any average Joes putting up nationwide commercials. Not even organized Joes like ASAN.



No. No they didn't. This is nice, sure, but it is not a commercial. This is a Public Service Announcement which is a completely different entity governed by different rules, timeslots, pricing, AND goal. Researching this on the nomyths website, I cannot even verify that this ever aired on a television anywhere.

This topic is about commercials, not YouTube videos.

*Source: Chait Day, Needham World Wide

We don't need commercials, we need PSAs. I'm not certain hat WrongPlanet is the right place for the PSA to come from, I'd think ASAN might be more appropriate. Part of the problem here in the US is that most PSAs are sponsored by the Ad Council. Autism Speaks already has this. Perhaps if ASAN were to try to get one.....

http://www.adcouncil.org/default.aspx?id=319

Have we considered other forms of communicating? Surely, there must be other ways of going about this. Local news must constantly struggle with slow news days.

I think the key here is to think outside the square.

I think this is a good idea to promote our voice. I actually wouldn't waste my time in mentioning Autism Speaks in the commercial though---don't give them any chance of suing over slander, etc. Instead, we just promote our voice of the WrongPlanet.

Television is to a large extent outdated, as well as extremely expensive. Many people completely ignore the television and a great deal of wealthier people simply fast forward through commercials. The Internet is a greater way to reach people because it can reach people in great numbers and it is fairly cheap if done right. The neurodiversity movement is already working on that however I think real life is a good way to bring awareness. I know that aspies are generally not the best at real life communicating but pamphlets can be be helpful. We can distribute them. My mom teaches advertising so maybe she can help. She is very for neurodiversity because she knows that my Asperger's is part of who I am.

You are right, TV is becoming outdated when it comes to reaching the masses. At one time, there might be over 50% of a viewing audience watching one of the three major networks (NBC, ABC, CBS), but today, I bet those networks are lucky to get 25%---and I may be way off on this. But, with the hundreds of satellite stations today, one has to air commercials on great amounts of channels to reach a decent amount of people. So yes, as you said Aziraphale, the internet is a powerful way for reaching great numbers of people.

Here's something we could do. There are numerous places on the internet where we can get a free website. If lots of us got free websites and promoted autism advocacy, we could possibly make a difference in the perception of autism. Each one of us that did this would obviously have quite different looking sites, but the one thing they would have in common would be promoting accurate advocacy. And, our messages would be coming from us with autism. This does have potential.

I do not support this. Autism Speaks can, should, and the results have been worth putting up with the hype. No one else raises large amounts of money for autism research.

While I do see some good traits in autism, think that life could be better with an adjusted world, I cannot speak for the pro autism side. I accept it as a reality, but would not promote it spreading.

I do not support Neurodiversity, the equality of all mental states does not work for me.

ASAN is Autism Speaks, someone else claiming to speak for me, niether do.

This is just self promoting self elected advocates,

Autism Speaks has done a lot more good for the autistic, through sponsored research. Biology, Genetics, Neurology, where advances in Science do a lot more good than a few out on the street with confusing signs.

What has happened has been the, Anti Science, Mental Illness Pride Movement.

Scientology has that corner covered.

What could be the goal of a targeted ad? Acceptance? Of what? No two autistic people are alike.

We are not oppressed, autists can be found in Science, the Arts, Education, Engineering, IT, Business, we are not excluded.

Most of us just pass in the world with little notice. Those that do notice run from indifferent to sympathetic.

I like the public view of Autism, the one Autism Speaks pushes. Autistic people do not speak, they just sit and spin things, rocking in a diaper.

Education is a bad thing when people ask if I am autistic, HFA has been a well kept secret, don't give them a label. If asked, I say no, a Unitarian.

Rain Man made my life harder, I am against being exploited.

A large part of this WP group has the traits, but they are less than disabling in three fields, hence they do not meet the DSM criteria

We flunked the DSM test, Neurodiversity passed.

Broader Autism Phenotype leaves 90% just living in the world and having to get by.

Pointing them out to the public is not a good idea.

This idea is nothing but going public with the medical records of 10% of the population.

That flunks the Ethics test.

Uh, would you mind being a little more concise, Inventor? I can't completely understand what you're saying.

While I agree that Austism Speaks does have it's place (research is good), I do disagree with some of their other practices. While there are people on the Autistic Spectrum that are like the image that they portray, there are people - like us - that don't fit it. Unfortunately, they have a nasty track record of suing anyone that criticizes them (Wasn't there a "Autism speaks for itself" tshirt or something that got sued to oblivion recently?).

We don't hate Autism Speaks because they raise money for research into autism; we hate them because they portray an incomplete image of the autistic spectrum that stigmatizes us. All other complaints are secondary to this.

That's why we need a voice out there - to balance the view of Autism Speaks, not remove it.

You're exagurating the suing thing.

The guy who made that t-shirt was not sued, but Autism Speaks did send a takedown notice to the company making the t-shirt claiming it infringed on their trademark. That would not hold up in court at all, by the way, because of Fair Use.

The only other time they've taken legal action was on the owner of the NTSpeaks site. They sent a letter saying they'd take her to court unless she took down the site, destroyed the source code, and handed the domain to them. They used the excuse of copyright infringement, and actually claimed that the site lost them $90,000. This was a horrible scare tactic, and again wouldn't hold up in court at all because of Fair Use. The site was put back up again by someone else later, and reamins up today. Google and you'll find it.

Autism Speaks' legal action is only a scare tactic. In fact, I'm quite sure there's legal grounds for anyone sued by them like this to launch a countersuit for abuse of power or something, things like that have happened before.

However, there are many anti-Autism Speaks sites running just fine. Remember, they're a bully, they will go for those who can't defend themselves. But they have no legal right to shut up anyone who speaks against them at all, they just like scare tactics.