We secured funding for the Lead Safe Mama, LLC New York City Subway PSA Campaign! Here’s the plan (your input is welcome)…
Published: April 23, 2023 — Sunday
Last Updated: April 23, 2023 — Sunday, 5:39 p.m. PST.
Please check back here periodically over the next two weeks as I will be updating this post with progress/ changes/ updates/ and goals for this campaign.
Update #3) April 27, 2023 – Thursday
Revised Draft Images for the Panels (with our new photos!)
Update #2) April 25, 2023 — Tuesday (2:30 p.m.)
An e-mail I sent to Lead Safe Mama, LLC friends and supporters last night
To Tatiana, Len, Eric, Katie, Carissa, Angela (x2), Meredith, Adrianna, Jess, Sarah, Justin, Ainslie, Matt, Colescott, A.J., Avi, Krista, Janelle, Beth, Ananda, Heidi, Leila, David, Jon & Patti –
FYI! I just got this tonight (image below, texted to me by the photographer we hired for the campaign) – it’s low res (since it was a text) and I do have some input for the photographer, but I just love these preliminary images!
I’m so excited this is happening, this could really tip the scales for this movement and the sustainability of Lead Safe Mama, LLC (as a business model for advocating for consumer goods safety and independent testing of products) & possibly will even get Lead paint on baby bottles banned (!!!! WTF, why are these words I ever need to utter in 2023?)
Also If this goes really well we’ll throw a big Lead Safe Mama 7th anniversary party around the holidays and invite all of you to come (from all over the country!) – with live music by The Rubin Brothers! & maybe some special celebrity guests will join us too! 😉
Thanks for helping everyone. We are going to be photographing a second batch too – probably later this week: vintage Tupperware, strawberry shortcake glass, some more milk bottles most likely.
Once I have draft campaign images with our graphics and photos I will share them all with you all for feedback before we finalize them. (Preliminary mock ups can be seen in the link below.)
Of course I don’t need to tell any of you this, but each of the items pictured below tested positive for unsafe levels of lead in the paint on the surface a child might touch – look at all of those different baby bottles I have found painted with lead paint in the past few years!!! (plus the two dishes pictured are glazed with very high leaded glazes – one is Jackie Kennedy’s contribution to the White House collection the other is a favorite of Martha Stewart.)
The person who has made this possible (financially) is also bcc’d on this email. This endeavor wouldn’t be possible without this funding & I will share more about that with you later or you can call me to chat if we haven’t spoken in the past week or two.
Also – if we haven’t spoke recently and / or you are curious to know more about the subway campaign & my plans- a link with more info is below: https://tamararubin.com/2023/04/we-secured-funding-for-the-lead-safe-mama-llc-new-york-city-subway-psa-campaign-heres-the-plan-your-input-is-welcome/
If you sent me milk bottles over the last couple of days and I haven’t reimbursed you for the milk and the postage yet, please let me know how much I owe you and I will Venmo you!
Thanks again everyone!
Update #1) April 23, 2023 — Sunday (5:40 p.m.)
Lead Safe Mama, LLC will be doing a PSA Campaign for Consumer Goods Safety and Childhood Lead-poisoning Prevention in the New York City Subway cars, from May 15, 2023, to June 11, 2023. The campaign goal is to generate awareness of the fact that Lead paint is still (in 2023) used on the outside of food-use items including baby bottles and milk bottles — and our government is not taking swift action in resolving this horrendous lack of supply-chain regulation and oversight — even in this current climate in which it is now widely-known and well accepted that there is no safe level of Lead-exposure for human beings (especially for the youngest humans, the ones using these Lead-contaminated products on a daily basis). The QR-code-linked articles in each image for the PSA Campaign will provide information about the specific product(s) shown in each of the images (including the potential related health concerns and test results for the exact items pictured) and will also share links to inexpensive, safer (Lead-free) alternatives to the items pictured (when relevant).
The Details
Below I am sharing the four proposed images for our upcoming subway campaign. I am putting them all on this post with the latest proposed draft of each image (scroll down to check them out). But first, here is some background:
- Each of the four images below is a Public Service Announcement (PSA) campaign panel designed to go above the doors, against the edge of the ceiling in the New York City Subway cars.
- They will be 70″ wide by 11″ tall.
- We will be securing the placement of 2,000 of these panels (one each in 1/3 of the 6,000 train cars actively working each day in the New York City Subway System).
- With our 2,000 panels, we can have four different images.
- Each image will have 500 instances up in the Subway.
- The period of this campaign will be from May 15, 2023, to June 11, 2023 (four weeks).
- If the PSA campaign also generates the increase in traffic on this website that we expect it may, we will use a chunk of funds raised (beyond the cost of the campaign) to continue and expand the campaign — adding additional panel concepts related to Consumer Goods Safety and Childhood Lead-poisoning Prevention.
- Yesterday (4/22/2023) we met up with the photographer who is photographing all of the items for this campaign. He expects to have the photos done by tomorrow (4/24/2023 — Monday).
- We are waiting for the funds to land so we can cover the direct costs to pay the advertising partner for the New York City Subways.
- We anticipate signing the contract with the company — to commit to the advertising — tomorrow.
- We are currently working on creating the back-end content that the QR codes on each panel will link to. This effort has included buying all of the types and brands of glass baby bottles currently available for sale on Amazon so we can test them, report on the results, AND create a “Baby Bottle Guide” that can act as a quick-reference post where parents can easily look up their bottles.
- We are also working on a press inquiry page, and a general background page to go with the campaign.
- We will be able to tell which images (of the four subway panels) are most engaging based on traffic to each of the QR-code-linked pages on the website. This will help us in creating new images for the second phase of the campaign (if we do raise enough to cover phase two — and BTW, we are already planning phase two!).
- The campaign will be gauged “successful” if we generate at least 4,000,000 “extra” page views over the course of the campaign.
- We will be able to fund extending the campaign if it generates at least 6.000,000 “extra” page views in May and June.
- The base page views we are using to determine what would be “extra” is anything over 1,300,000 page views per month for the duration of the campaign.
- Current To-Do List:
- Create a press release to go with the campaign
- Create the press inquiry page to go with the campaign
- Sign the campaign contract with the agency
- Test and report on all of the pending baby bottles (share all of that on social media)
- Integrate all of the baby bottles into the Baby Bottle Guide
- Once we get the photos back from the photographer, we will re-do the mockups with the new original product photos (each with unique QR codes) for each of the four themes
- Publish all four of the QR-code-linked articles, and get community feedback (make sure they link to press inquiries and additional background info)
- Write up a separate post about the desired outcome of the campaign (as it relates to the importation of Lead-painted glassware for use with food) — perhaps in the form of a letter to President Biden)
- Create linked Change dot org petitions for each panel
Below are the FOUR current mockup images, so folks can see them all in one place — and give me some feedback as we go along in finalizing the details for this Public Service Announcement in the New York City Subways (again currently scheduled to start on May 15, 2023).
A dish popularized, in part, by Martha Stewart
One of the most popular china patterns of the past century
Jackie Kennedy’s china addition to the White House china collection
One of the most popular china patterns of the past century
Recently manufactured glass baby bottles
2023 purchased reusable glass milk bottles
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I would put those old Corelle patterns in your campaign, that’s what got me to visit your website!
I agree. Take out the glass milk bottles and replace with Corelle. People have more Corelle than they do glass milk bottles.
Agree! I feel like vintage Corelle and vintage Pyrex is more popular now than blue willow, but maybe that’s just because I live in hipster Northern California.
This is so exciting!!
Here is my feedback:
I know that you capitalize the L in lead in your writing. As an editor, I would lowercase anything that is not a proper noun. Note: the example that has “unsafe Levels of Lead”. I would write “unsafe levels of lead”.
Can you include a Spanish language translation?
Whenever there is a QR code, the best practice is to clearly state the link destination. You could put “QR code links to: “ and then put a URL and/or the title of the page it goes to (or simple description).
Can you also include, in small print, your mission?
I would suggest removing one of the Garfield mugs and place a Disney glass there. That is what got me to your site! Thanks for your hard work.
I agree with the comment about Corell dishes.
You could could also put the Stewart and Kennedy China on the same poster calling them popular China designs. Omit the. Martha Stewart and Jacqueline Kennedy names. Lots of people like them. By omitting the names it does not sound as much like an attack and could avoid lawsuits.
Where can I find a link to the Asian plates (Martha Stewart) lead results that are depicted in the picture. My parents use THOSE EXACT PLATES for holidays and I want to have a blog entry to point them to, not just an ad.