A debate of the Future of God between Michael Shermer, Sam Harris and Deepak Chopra and a woman who went to australia and saw Koala birds

Advertising on Stuff would be another option too.

@Michael has a good point with the billstickers. However, I do think we need to push the point with NZBus. Getting celebrities in on the game would help too.

What about the South Island though? NZBus have the North Island buses tied up, but they don’t cover the South Island bus companies.

Actually, thinking about the banner ads on Stuff, how many of us have websites? I’d be happy to post the banner on a few of the sites I have.

Spreading an atheistic message I hope will indeed help people think twice about their certainty in god, there are many tragedies on earth that would have been avoided if it weren’t for religion, so spreading atheism is an important endeavour. for saving lives, and saving sunday’s.

Look over the earlier thread:

http://www.nogod.org.nz/2010/02/atheist-bus-campaign-determined-to-roll-on-despite-set-back/?cp=all#comments

There’s some contact information for NZ Bus available there.

Now that you mention it, I wouldn’t mind hearing from Simon if there’s anything more we can all be doing regarding NZ Bus’ decision and the Human Rights Commission.

I’m wondering if you can start pulling in well- known/famous New Zealanders to push this message also. This is a tried-and-proven approach advertisers and even elections run on.

I argue that we should really try to push the envelope on the bus thing before moving on to other options.

That said, it is very heartening to know there are other advertisement companies out there who don’t share suspiciously convenient opinion that an atheist based ad campaign is too ‘divisive’.

If it turns out not to be an option, or if the wait is going to be too long, I would argue for billboards. I think one or two billboards somewhere prominent in each major city would be the way to go, rather than multiple billboards that are spread out. Preferably somewhere that’s high up enough that it would be difficult to deface.

I can think of a couple of good spots in Auckland, actually. I’ll pay attention next time I’m driving past to get a rough idea of the street address. The two I like are the one over the motorway bridge that heads west towards the Khyber Pass off-ramp. The other one is off Fanshawe (I think) and is currently running an ad for the Bruno movie.

That said, I have no frame of reference for the cost of running a billboard advertisement, so this may not be reasonable with our current funding. Would this even be an option?

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As for the message we use in the ads: I still think that for what we’re trying to do, copying the UK campaign is the way to go. Keep the same slogan we’re running now.

Also consider that if we run the current slogan, society wo’t divide into a controversial and damaging culture war, and it wouldn’t effect the long term growth of the company that runs with our ads. This would become another very good talking point regarding the flimsy excuses given by NZBus for their decision and close-mindedness to negotiation.

Regarding NZBus, I consider their justification to their decision to be utter nonsense, particularly in light of their communication to those of us that have contacted them. Their decision strikes me as blatantly religious discrimination. Even if we don’t wind up going with the bus campaign in the end, I would like to see the organization held accountable for this in some way. It needn’t be financial… But some kind of public acknowledgement that discrimination against any group on religious grounds is not acceptable behavior for any New Zealand company would be reassuring.

Anyway: If I had to vote for a second favorite slogan, something along the lines of ‘Thousands/millions/some statistic of Kiwis are good without God – Are you?’ would be my next in line. Can’t remember which country ran that one, but I thought it was also a good way of raising awareness amongst the religion that atheism is another normal way to live in this country.