MEDIA: WHAT THE PAPERS SAY; Bad hair message gets the brush-off

Coverage of the Church of England’s Bad Hair Day campaign received

balanced coverage.

The style and content of the campaign was designed to attract the

attention of a younger, streetwise audience and hence, by definition, to

irritate traditionalists.

News coverage portrayed by the Archbishop of York as ‘incandescent’ with

his counterpart in Canterbury giving ‘guarded support’.

Opinion pieces also were divided between the ‘incand-escent’ (Piers

Paul Read and Steve Doughty in the Daily Mail) and ‘guarded’ (comedienne

Jo Brand in the Independent and various cartoonists). Letters from

churchmen in the Times were 3:1 supportive of the campaign. In general,

the main complaint was that while the advertising was exciting, the

product was still too dull and irrelevant.

Mark Lawson (in the Guardian) summed up his view that the campaign would

fail, writing: ‘the only real bad hair day in scripture was Samson’s’.

Evaluation and analysis by Carma International. Cuttings supplied by The

Broadcast Monitoring Company. ‘What The Papers Say’ can also be found

at: http//www. carma.com/carma