Second year Annenberg graduate student Angel Ho wants us all to keep it in our pants.
On April 22, Ho was named winner of the "Keep It In Your Pants" Student Video Contest for creating a public service announcement about the threat that credit debt poses to American consumers. She was awarded a $5,000 scholarship for her "Safe Spending" video.
The site that hosted the contest - keepitinyourpants.org - is dedicated to educating young people about what they have dubbed "debt disease."
The video begins with a shot of a young man unrolling a condom. He proceeds to stuff all his credit cards and cash into separate condoms, and then he jams each item back into his wallet before putting the wallet itself into yet another condom.
At the end of the video, another young man walks in and asks him for a quarter.
"There are better ways to protect yourself from debt," the title reads.
Communications professor Paul Messaris explained that Ho originally created the video for the Public Service Announcement production class he teaches, in which six students research social communication design and produce public service announcements. Four of the students in the class entered the contest, and all four reached the semi-finals.
"[The organizers of the competition] try to make it catchy and funny by putting sex into it," Ho said. "They especially paralleled debt to venereal disease."
She added that this method is successful just because "people using sex-related objects inappropriately is pretty darn funny."
And students agree the message is important.
"Taking measures to avoid running up a credit card bill is important for young people," said first-year Annenberg graduate student Andrew Crocco, who played the main character in the video. "I think [Ho's] video is humorous and accessible . people enjoy it and pass it along."
Second-year Annenberg graduate student Nehama Lewis, who was also in the class, agreed that the video was very well thought-out. She added that the video is "effective in that if you don't have any credit card debt, you become more aware that there is this problem," but if you do have debt, the video gets the point across in a humorous, didactic way.
Ho said that in total it only took her a few hours to shoot and edit the video.
"It's been a little bit strange because most people at my school have seemed to think it's a pretty big deal," she said. Although she admits that some have called the video somewhat "risque," she said she thinks the video has been altogether well-received.
Crocco said that he hasn't yet experienced any "celebrity effects" of being "the guy that stuffed the entire contents of his wallet in a condom."
"I was not at the time anticipating being part of anything that would be spread out any further than the Annenberg community," he said with a laugh. "It's probably better to go into something like that not thinking that anyone was going to see it."
