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Canadian university mocks Bush in ad campaign
Dispatch.com
Wednesday, August 30, 2006 6:34 AM
This image is the centerpiece of Lakehead University’s advertising campaign.
A Canadian university is making fun of President Bush as part of a new advertising campaign designed to increase enrollments.
Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, has established a Web site, www.yaleshmale.com, that features a photograph of Bush. Next to the photograph is the text, "Graduating from an Ivy League university doesn't necessarily mean you're smart."
Visitors to the Web site who click on a link agreeing with the statement are then invited to consider enrolling at Lakehead.
"There are universities and then there are universities. So let's not beat around the bush," the Web site proclaims.
Fred Gilbert, the university's president, told television network CTV that the $100,000 campaign was designed to attract applicants from Toronto to the 7,600-student university in Thunder Bay, 850 miles northwest on the shores of Lake Superior. Roughly 60 posters and billboards with Bush's picture and the phrase "Yale Shmale" are going up in the Toronto area to promote the Web site.
Gilbert said the Web site received more than 7,000 hits on Monday.
Not everyone on Lakehead's campus approves of the campaign.
"It strikes me as being very repugnant," Isabelle Poniatowski, president of the student union, told Reuters. "Lakehead has so many positive attributes that you could really sell to people that live down south."
Gilbert told CTV that the reaction in Toronto to the campaign is being closely monitored, and if the university receives a significant number of complaints, the campaign will be dropped.
Dispatch.com
Wednesday, August 30, 2006 6:34 AM
This image is the centerpiece of Lakehead University’s advertising campaign.
A Canadian university is making fun of President Bush as part of a new advertising campaign designed to increase enrollments.
Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, has established a Web site, www.yaleshmale.com, that features a photograph of Bush. Next to the photograph is the text, "Graduating from an Ivy League university doesn't necessarily mean you're smart."
Visitors to the Web site who click on a link agreeing with the statement are then invited to consider enrolling at Lakehead.
"There are universities and then there are universities. So let's not beat around the bush," the Web site proclaims.
Fred Gilbert, the university's president, told television network CTV that the $100,000 campaign was designed to attract applicants from Toronto to the 7,600-student university in Thunder Bay, 850 miles northwest on the shores of Lake Superior. Roughly 60 posters and billboards with Bush's picture and the phrase "Yale Shmale" are going up in the Toronto area to promote the Web site.
Gilbert said the Web site received more than 7,000 hits on Monday.
Not everyone on Lakehead's campus approves of the campaign.
"It strikes me as being very repugnant," Isabelle Poniatowski, president of the student union, told Reuters. "Lakehead has so many positive attributes that you could really sell to people that live down south."
Gilbert told CTV that the reaction in Toronto to the campaign is being closely monitored, and if the university receives a significant number of complaints, the campaign will be dropped.