Don’t go sending your kids to a summer camp run by Dutch Shinobi, unless you want them majorly messed up! Shinobi is a creation of the Calgary Distress Centre, thank goodness, and he distributes amusingly inappropriate advice on many topics.
When asked by Matthew how to deal with rumours being spread about him around the school, Dutch advises:
"Change your last name to ‘Never’. For example: Matthew Never made out with Joanne Smith last night. Rumour deflected."
Not surprisingly, the tag line for the radio ad is: "For advice that doesn’t suck, visit CalgaryConnecTeen.com"
ConnecTeen is a venture launched in March as a continuation of the Distress Centre’s earlier peer-support phone work. The Centre felt that, though they had done a great deal of good work, they didn’t seem to be contacting the at-risk youth for whom it was intended, only the adults and teens who knew of their system already.
"ConnecTeen was built out of a former program called Teen Line, which was launched in 1983," says Michelle Wickerson, Communications Manager for the Distress Centre. "It was the first of its kind to offer that peer-to-peer support in Canada."
"So we’re reintroducing to all the youth services in the city, and trying to get it in front of youths’ eyes... So we relied quite heavily on our youth volunteers. We said, here’s a bunch of options we’ve got for logos, for names, for different things. You tell us what YOU think."
Of course, the dominance of the telephone as a communication device amongst youngsters has declined. Texting has been adopted (quite heavily) by young adults for their networking needs. The ConnecTeen launch specifically addresses this change, incorporating online chat for contacting the Distress Centre’s volunteers.
Michelle continues, "Youth is an exponentially growing demographic in our population, so we know we’re going to have large groups of youth who are experiencing challenges and we need to be able to be there for them... ConnecTeen is actually answered 24 hours a day, but in the 5pm to 10pm hours it’s youth volunteers who are responding to the calls (or chats)... We need to be ahead of the ball in order to be able to offer them services in a way that they’re comfortable accessing them. By being able to offer it online, it just gives them a level of comfort; they’re already on computers so extensively."
Enter Dutch Shinobi.
"Teens get a lot of advice, in every shape and form, from every contact point in their lives. So Dutch Shinobi has created his own show, and is spouting out his advice, but his advice is absolutely terrible! We’ve gone with the most outrageous advice that we could come up with... The themes that the advice is built upon are the things that are the top-caller concerns that we get on our ConnecTeen line, but counselor options that we would never suggest to a caller."
Michelle mentions that their poll of the youth volunteers brought them face to face with the ‘Old Spice guy’ ads, and the phenomenal popularity that had with the younger audience, the ironic self-deprecating humour which struck a definite chord in the youth viewers, and which helped inspire the ridiculous character they hope will attract the teen eyes to the ConnecTeen phone number and website.
Dutch gets another question from "Jeanine" about what she can do if she gets bullied at school.
"Like wolves, bullies can smell fear, so just cover it up, with some nice strong cologne, or some deer musk. This is Dutch Shinobi, Life’s Sherpa, saying Step in My Steps."
Or not.