"You and your dopey sign".

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YEARS AGO I asked a PR specialist how I could know if a publicity stunt I cooked up might be effective. He answered, If you re" embarrassed to tell your family about it" In other words, it has to be taboo-breaking, silly, or both.

So in July 2008 the American Humanist Association began planning for a splashy advertising campaign on Washington, DC, buses. But in October a media story went global about how the British Humanist Association was planning to put signs on London buses in reaction to a widely-run Christian campaign there threatening unbelievers with hellfire. The Atheist Bus Campaign "adverts," written by comedy writer Ariane Sherine, would read, "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." The news allowed the BHA to raise a whopping 120,402.00 [pounds sterling] (about $180,000 U.S.) in a single month.

So we on the AHA advertising committee accelerated our work, experimenting with a range of slogans and finally settling on: "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake" We contracted for the ad space, designed and printed the signs, bought display ads in the New York Times and Washington Post, and held a well-attended press conference November 11.

Then came the deluge. The story immediately hit television and radio. Newspapers from coast to coast and beyond our borders followed the next morning. Associated Press used the headline, "God, humbug: Humanist holiday ads say just be good," and opened with, "You better watch out. There is a new combatant in the Christmas wars" Bishop Council Nedd, chairman of an advocacy group In God We Trust, was harsher: "These ads are a deliberate attack on American traditions, beliefs and customs by a United Nation's affiliated group that espouses a radical anti-American agenda." But AHA spokespeople had made it clear at the press conference that the slogan, accompanied by a shrugging character in a Santa suit, was merely posing a rhetorical question and offering a positive ethic to the humanistically inclined.

All the attention, however, led to such a sudden high volume of visitors to www.whybelieveinagod.org, the special campaign website, that the AHA server crashed twice. And media interview requests swarmed in. Soon AHA Executive Director Roy Speckhardt was on Fox and Friends and CNN Headline News while I went on the O'Reilly Factor and The Laura Ingraham Show. We and other staff were pressed into service for a variety of others shows, both on television and radio.

These appearances generated further reaction--and not only from the media. All of the AHA's phone lines were clogged for days. The calls, which were overwhelmingly critical, came from almost everywhere in America except Washington, DC. Indeed, local television stations that interviewed people on the street could find no local hostility to the AHA's bus signs. It was the religious right echo chamber, beating the annual "War on Christmas" drum, that had mobilized the complaints. E-mails also piled up, some naughty, some nice. But a large percentage were positive. AHA membership grew.

Then there was the campaign's influence. Public interest spilled over to boost the FreeThoughtAction billboard campaign in Colorado that immediately followed, generating about twenty media interviews there. The Greater Philadelphia Coalition of Reason placed a variation of the bus slogan on a large sign in the center-city Free Speech Zone next to a holiday creche and menorah. And Beltway Atheists in Washington, DC, spun off a "Doing Good for Goodness' Sake" charitable campaign to aid the homeless and promote respect for nontheistic veterans.

In the end, the PR advice proved solid. While conservative talk-show host Bill O'Reilly tried to be dismissive-"I have no problem with you and your dopey sign"--it all was enough to get me on his show and also get humanism noticed around the world.

Fred Edwords is director of communications for the American Humanist Association.