Do new library ads just borrow trouble? Deborah Caulfield Rybak, Star Tribune May 23, 2005
What do Mao Zedong, J. Edgar Hoover, Batgirl and Casanova have to do with the new Minneapolis Central Library?
They're part of an edgy new ad campaign from the Friends of the Minneapolis Public Library -- edgier than the organization even expected. It has generated heated e-mails from as far away as Taiwan, and the campaign hasn't even been formally launched.
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The ad campaign was donated by the Andrews/Birt agency, creator of such eye-catching campaigns as the city of Excelsior's "Secede from Starbucks Nation" that caused a ruckus a couple of years ago.
In one of the library ads, Mao Zedong, who led Communist China until his death in the 1970s, is described as "a former librarian who created the 3rd largest economy in the world (and least diverse collection of books)."
An architectural rendering of the new library's design is pictured in a separate photo and described as "our future library, which will house the 3rd largest per capita collection of books in the country (including a few copies of Mao's little red book)."
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/ dave /