Woodbury marketing company launches online parental-control campaign created with Playboy

Team Services made its name on the sale of sex and violence.

The Woodbury marketing company cut its teeth promoting pay-per-view wrestling events in the early '90s, and today markets programsfor soft pornography titan Playboy Enterprises and the no-holds-barred Ultimate Fighting Championship.

But Team Services' newest project speaks of its more sociallyresponsible side.

Earlier this week the company launched Take Parental Control, anonline campaign it created with Playboy that aims to educate parentsabout ways they can control what media their children are watching.

Team Services President and Chief Executive Bonnie Werth said theidea to create the campaign, whose main focus is its Web sitetakeparentalcontrol.org, had been swirling around between her andPlayboy for some time. Team Service has been Playboy's marketingagency for 10 years, she said.

The project was spawned by the back-and-forth banter betweenWerth and her teenage daughter about suitable programming foradolescents.

Playboy funded the project for an undisclosed but substantialamount, Werth said, but you won't find Playboy's iconic bunnysilhouette anywhere on the site.

The Web site features a glossary of Web terms for parents, withdescriptions for words like bandwidth, blog and WiFi. The site alsofeatures links to the Federal Communication Commission's V-chippage, the Internet Content Rating Association, the EntertainmentSoftware Rating Board and the Motion Picture Association of America.

There are many campaigns out there, but most only deal with the V-chip, she said. V-chip, or violence chip, is embedded in televisionsand blocks adult-rated programs. This campaign expanded the scopeand included DVR, computer, video games and satellite radio.

Werth co-founded Team Services in 1991 and bought out her partnerin 1998. The company creates Web-based, video and graphic marketingmaterials for clients like Girls Gone Wild, SpiceTV, World WrestlingEntertainment and Universal Studios.

Werth says the Take Parental Control campaign was the first timethe company ventured into public relations.

She said numerous television commercials and advertisingmaterials have been made for Take Parental Control, and TeamServices has sent the television commercials to Comcast, TimeWarner, Cablevision and other cable providers. Now, the company mustwait until the media decides to run them.