Mosquito Advertising: The Crunch Campaign

Is advertising at the root of all evil?
Will banning soft drink ads do anything to solve the childhood obesity epidemic?
Do bans work at all?

Thirteen-year-old Katie Crisp and her mates at Mosquito Advertising believe there must be a better idea. All they have to do is work out what it is.

Kate Hunter - advertising copywriter, Gruen panellist, columnist, parent and author explores these big issues in her latest novel for middle readers.

Mosquito Advertising, the advertising agency Katie Crisp started with the kids in her street, return from their amazing trip to New York to hear some shocking news: the government is planning to ban advertising for fast food, starting with soft drinks. Such a ban would see their first client - Parfitts Family Soft Drink Company - go out of business. All Mosquito Advertising's hard work will have been for nothing.

Katie is furious. Bans don't work, everyone knows that, and while the other soft drink companies weasel their way around the new rules, Mosquito Advertising plots to rewrite them. Katie reckons the key is to make ads for fruit as cool as ads for fizzy drinks. It's a great idea - all they have to do is convince the Prime Minister.

But great ideas aren't always enough, especially when you're also dealing with paying clients, a missing kid, moody friends, shadowy enemies … and a family set to triple in size!

In Mosquito Advertising: The Crunch Campaign, the third and final book in this exciting middle reader series, Katie and her friends take on the challenge of advertising fresh fruit and vegetables to kids. Katie figures that better ads for good food will be more effective than banning junk food ads. 'We need to level the playing field,' she tells her friends. Kate Hunter wrote Mosquito Advertising: The Crunch Campaign to entertain, but also to help kids understand that advertising can be about selling ideas as well as physical things. 'This can be tricky to understand,' says Kate, 'The success or failure of selling an idea or a concept isn't measurable in terms of sales. Change of behaviour can be happen for many reasons - ads may or may not have much to do with it.'

Our favourite Mosquito Advertising characters return, including Katie's bestie Lorraine and her grouchy Auntie Nancy. We also meet a new posse of characters - a Prime Minister under pressure, a devious Health Minister, a junk food magnate and an advertising queen bee - all written with Kate Hunter's trademark wit and charm.

'The kids of Mosquito Advertising surprise and delight me,' says Kate, 'I wish I could have been as brave and resourceful as they are. This book was great fun to write. I hope it's as much fun to read - that's what I aim for.'

Kate Hunter has been writing since she was very small. Originally keen on journalism, her inclination to embellish the truth got in the way of a credible journalistic career. After twenty years as a copywriter, Kate still writes ads but prefers writing novels. In 2010, Kate published her first novel Mosquito Advertising: The Parfizz Pitch. It was followed a year later by Mosquito Advertising: The Blade Brief. She lives in Brisbane with her husband, their three kids, a dog, and - after rain - more than a few mosquitoes.

Mosquito Advertising: The Crunch Campaign
UQP
Author: Kate Hunter
ISBN: 9780702239397
Price: $14.99