Staples - Math Phobia
Imagine you are making your annual trip to Staples to gather up school supplies. You pick out a new notebook, pens, and mechanical pencils. Then you go to grab your graphing calculator for your math course and get hit with this subtle little message:
Marketers at @Staples need to know that this is the wrong message. @DemosParneros cc @TICalculators @pbalyta #mtbos pic.twitter.com/mCz1UAFNty
— Jen Silverman (@jensilvermath) August 24, 2015
This is brutal. The school year has not even started yet and this ad is reenforcing the message that math is NOT enjoyable. The take-home message for kids is "Fun colors make everything better -- even math which is particularly challenging to make enjoyable in any way."
This is not helping. Do ads like these show up in other countries?