• by Aaron Baar , December 3, 2009

LG is taking a soft-sell approach to getting teens to think twice before sending hurtful rumors or sexually explicit messages via their cell phones in a new multifaceted awareness campaign.

"As a leading manufacturer of texting devices, we want to remind teens and tweens to think before they text," company representative Demetra Kavadeles tells Marketing Daily. "With teens across the county sending more than 20,000 texts per second, there is no better time than the present to launch this campaign."

The campaign is born out of company research that many teens consider forwarding text-based gossip and explicit pictures to be a normal part of their texting habits, Kavadeles says. "Many texters often don't realize the consequences of their actions," she says.

LG's resulting effort, "Give It a Ponder," takes a lighthearted approach to get teens to consider these consequences, using the idea of stroking a beard while thinking as a visual image for the campaign.

"After interviewing teens from across the country, we learned that a heavy-handed approach toward addressing this issue would not reach our intended audience," Kavadeles says. "The beard is the iconic visual representing the action of 'pondering.' It was created as a way to highlight and accentuate the everyday action of rubbing one's chin when deep in thought."

The core of the program is a microsite, www.giveitaponder.com, that features webisodes for the campaign.

James Lipton -- bearded host of Bravo's "Inside the Actor's Studio" -- stars in the videos. In them, he removes his beard and places it on a teen who is considering sending a harmful text message.

In one webisode, Lipton narrates as a boy, Carlos, contemplates sending a nasty text rumor about his ex-girlfriend, Claire. But before he can send the text, Lipton physically removes his beard and places it on the boy. As Carlos strokes the beard and thinks about the rumor, he comes to a realization (narrated by Lipton): "Claire is allergic to nuts. She will never know the delicious perfection of a pecan, or a walnut. No, he will not send this text. Claire has been punished enough."

In other videos, Lipton narrates the tale of Vicki who wants to send a rumor about her best friend's boyfriend, who is "oven-mitt hot," and a boy who wants to send "a picture of his junk" to a girl. In both cases, Lipton offers his beard as a way for the teens to contemplate their actions.

"James Lipton was identified as the perfect narrator to deliver the message with the humor required," Kavadeles says. "On top of his trademark beard, Lipton's authoritative and dramatic persona provides the perfect vessel to deliver a teen's inner thoughts in a way that is both memorable and hysterical."

The webisodes are also running as in-cinema advertising, before such teen-oriented fare as "Twilight: New Moon," and LG is using digital out-of-home billboards in malls, banner advertising on teen-frequented Web sites and social media applications to promote the microsite, Kavadeles says.