The ad is a failure because it's now being hijacked and used as fodder for discussions just like this.
The saying that there's no such thing as bad publicity doesn't apply when you're aiming for a universal "feel good" altruism vibe.
This ad will now be associated with uncomfortable, conflicted sentiment.
...that awkward silence where folks on one hand intuitively know that organ donation is good but mocking black humour at the expense of someone's spirituality is bad.
Leave it to a Christian to understand the optics of mass-appeal ads. If nothing else, you understand selling things.
Well he clearly doesn't understand selling things to Australians. Mocking black humour at the expense of pompous authoritarians is pretty much our national sport.
Our various states may not agree on which football code to watch; Our population may be split on whether cricket should be played over five days, or twenty overs; Even the Melbourne Cup no longer stops the nation. But you can count the Aussies who don't laugh at anti-authoritarian jokes (the more offensive the better) on the fingers of one foot.
Since the first fleet, Australia has been divided between the authorities (a hated minority); And the dedicated opponents of authority (everyone else). The church was off limits in most Australian communities until quite recently. But if Lion thinks that mocking Christianity is still a no-no, he must be living fifty years or more in the past.
If I was asked to describe my countrymen in a single word, 'irreverent' would be amongst my first choices.
Christianity still dominates in rural and regional Australia. But 86% of our population is urban - and even the self described Christians in our cities are mostly derisive of pomposity, and prepared to laugh at themselves.
