We just plopped a photo of MTV’s VP of Public Affairs, Jason Rzepka, into a proposal I’m presenting on Thursday. It’s a big proposal, I hope we get it. And we listed Jason as a core member of the team that will work on the partnership because of Jason’s passion, innovation and innate ability to channel Millennial force. In other words, we “dog-and-ponied” Jason!
And then I sit here reading the pitch deck, staring at Jason’s bio, and think about what Jason’s actually doing at MTV. He’s propelling a legacy. He is using the power of MTV for good.
I work here because I fucking believe in this place. In the power of a new generation — not even my generation — that’s inherited MTV and is entitled to speak through it as their own. Jason’s someone who helps make that happen with stuff like this:
Check out what ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY had to say:
MTV’s good deed of the week: Affecting new spots tackle sexting, condoms, and abuse
by Jennifer Armstrong
Is it just me, or is MTV building up quite the karmic surplus as of late? Sure, they’ve been testing this good-and-true programming track for about six months now, and, thank goodness, it must be working — the sweet-hearted Buried Life is shooting a second season, 16 and Pregnant will be back in the fall to continue the world’s most effective ongoing ad for condom use, and Teen Mom is currently in its second (and ever-more-arresting) season of de-glamorizing young motherhood. Now come the similar-in-spirit public service ads that paint a painfully sympathetic portrait of modern girlhood, with Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation), Jessica Stroup (90210), and Rosario Dawson reading eloquent monologues from Eve Ensler’s bestseller I am an Emotional Creature: the Secret Life of Girls Around the World:
Without even a hint of preaching, the spots address sexting, “asking the question” (the question being, “Can you please use a condom?”), and the disturbingly ambivalent reaction many teen girls had to Chris Brown’s assault on Rihanna. The campaign echoes themes found in the network’s equally excellent It’s Your (Sex) Life and A Thin Line PSAs — nobody makes contraception cool and digital abuse uncool like MTV. It’s all almost enough to make up for The Jersey Shore and The Real World — which also, once upon a time, kids, used to have quite the social conscience itself.
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