UPDATE: AVN Changes Ad as PAAIA Seeks a Creative Solution to a Sensitive Problem

By PAAIA Editorial Staff

July 9, 2010, Washington, D.C. – The American Values Network (AVN) informed PAAIA today that it will drop an anti-oil ad campaign that targeted Iran in favor of a new concept that promotes clean energy but shields innocent Iranians and Iranian Americans from a bad image.

PAAIA wrote AVN in May, 2010, expressing concern that by targeting Iran as the enemy, the ‘oil kills’ ad displayed on metro buses in the capital implied that all Iranians are enemies of the U.S., and in a series of follow-up exchanges, urged AVN to make the Iranian regime the focus of the ad rather than Iran.

“I appreciate PAAIA’s thoughtful and constructive engagement about our ad campaign.  I have not only enjoyed the interaction with PAAIA’s leadership and members, but as promised we went back to a blank slate to see if there was another way to meet our goals for the campaign while reflecting PAAIA’s desire to avoid any possible confusion between the policies of the repressive regime in Iran and the Iranian people it is repressing or Iranian Americans,” said Eric Sapp, Executive Director of AVN.  “The result of that creative process was that we identified an entirely new direction for the campaign that we feel will be just as effective as our original ad about Ahmadinejad.” 

AVN’s new ad campaign focuses on former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s arguments that the U.S. can reduce its dependence on foreign oil by drilling off-shore.  AVN argues that domestic drilling will not even begin to address our dependence on foreign oil.

PAAIA is grateful to AVN for addressing the concerns of the Iranian American community by finding a creative solution to a sensitive problem.