Results: City Of Toronto Promotes Skin Cream In Strange Bus Shelter Ads

If you saw one of the ads from Toronto's latest public awareness campaign, you'd think it was for Clinique, or Olay, or some other skin care giant. "Introducing the world's first aging cream," reads one, showing an image of a face cream jar next to some tools in muted colours. "Restore up to 5x the confidence on the job. Minimize concerns over your reliability and skillset," it continues. "Increase respect — practically overnight!" A website and a November 12 launch date were listed at the bottom of the TTC bus shelter ads — until that date, when they were covered up by banners announcing what the campaign is actually promoting. Logos for the City of Toronto and the National Initiative for the Care of the Elderly can be seen on the new stickers, along with a URL linking to a page on the city's website about anti-ageism in the work place. As it turns out, aging cream doesn't exist. The value of older people in the work place does exist, however, which is exactly what the posters are trying to get across. Do you think this is an effective public awareness campaign?

"Ageism is the most socially accepted, normalized and tolerated form of discrimination today," reads the campaign's related website. "Ageism, like racism and sexism stems, from the assumption that all people of a group (i.e. older people) are the same," the site continues. "Within the workplace, older adults are less likely to be hired, receive training and experience more discrimination than their younger colleagues." Do you agree that "ageism" is a big problem in our society?

The campaign was produced by the Toronto-based social impact marketing agency Public Inc. as part of the city-sponsored "Toronto For All" initiative — the same one that also "built" a fully-enclosed bus shelter to highlight transit accessibility issues last April. The tag line "feeling left out" drove home the difficulties people with mobility issues, or in wheelchairs, face trying to access buildings or structures that are not accessible for all. Do you think this got the point across?

They also released a short video on ageism, which ties in with the "aging" cream. Do you think that a campaign like this can really make a difference in ending ageism?