Can you take me to your website?

I was sitting watching television the other night when another community service announcement came on with photos of a mother lovingly breastfeeding her baby.

As my brain slowly tuned out this message, the baby opened his eyes and spoke.

By this stage, the double Yuk factor has set in – breastfeeding and talking babies. Could this get any worse?

But it was the words the baby spoke that made me sit up and take notice:“Get ahead in life. Suck up to the boss.”

You can see the ad for yourself on the Australian Breastfeeding Association’s website at http://www.breastfeeding.asn.au/media/breast01.mpg

Whether or not you like the idea of breastfeeding or even the ad itself, it offers some useful lessons for anyone creating advertising for any medium.

• Surprise: Not the fact that the baby spoke, but what he said.
  
• Humour: The play on words was funny.
  
• Contrast: Between the softness of the breastfeeding shots to the starkness of the talking baby.

Will it make more women breastfeed? Probably not.

But it made me go and look at their website.