“We had an amazing summer of 2001, and that was with little or no advertising,” said one shark who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Once our new ads roll out, summer of 2002 is going to be awesome.”
Zach Steinmetz, the ad wizard responsible for the sharks’ campaign, says that the commercials show swimmers frolicking in a beautiful blue ocean and feature the slogan, “Water: cool, refreshing and safer than ever.”
But Marjorie Lenz, who heads up an ad-watchdog group, is crying foul over the sharks’ ads, which she claims are dangerously misleading.
“There’s absolutely no mention of sharks anywhere in these ads,” Ms. Lenz said. “In the interest of balance, there should be something that says, ‘By the way, there are sharks in that cool, refreshing water, and they really like to bite your arms off.”
Steinmetz defends his ads from such criticism: “At the end of each ad, there’s a little thing that says, ‘Remember, swim responsibly.’ We think that covers it.”
But Lenz and other antishark activists remain unconvinced. “I’d like to know what ads they intend to run if, as predicted, we have a record number of shark attacks this summer,” Lenz said.
“Frankly, if that happens, that just means that we’ve done our job well,” says Steinmetz, who is now moving on to launch a new ad campaign for Martha Stewart.
