Erwin-Penland Makes Upstanding Gesture

Adweek: The front row of seats on 15 public transportation buses in Greenville, S.C., bear black ribbons in memory of Rosa Parks, the Alabama cleaning woman who helped spark the civil rights movement by refusing to surrender her bus seat to a white man.
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The ribbons carry the message, “Sometimes you have to sit down to stand up for something,” and will remain on the bus seats through the end of this week. The work was conceived, created and financed by Erwin-Penland, an Interpublic Group advertising agency in Greenville.
Parks died Oct. 24 at the age of 92. Fifty years ago, she was arrested in Montgomery, Ala., for violating a law that required African Americans to sit in the back of buses. In response, the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led a 381-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system that evolved into the civil rights movement.
Parks also was honored this week by becoming the first woman to lie in state in the Capitol rotunda in Washington, D.C.

About David Burn

I wrote my first ad for a local political candidate when I was 17. She went on to win her race, and I felt the power of persuasive copy for the first time. Starting in Portland in 1995, I worked my way across the country as a copywriter and eventually became a content director making media products for big packaged goods brands. I returned to Oregon in 2008, and now I focus on building brands for companies that matter, including this one.

  • Carl LaFong

    Very nice — and certainly a more appropriate tribute than Apple’s clumsy attempt to turn Ms. Parks’ courageous act into a tagline.

  • Bob

    It certainly IS a nice tribute. My only problem with is that the line comes directly from a speech someone gave after Ms. Parks’ passing. Shouldn’t they have added a small credit line to the author? Or is it just a case of an obvious line that a lot of people thought of?