About

Why Didn't You Invest in Eastern Poland refers to a series photoshopped images based on a Polish economic stimulus advertising campaign, featuring a child looking sternly at the camera. The images typically replace either the child's stern looking face or place the adds tagline "What will you say when your child asks: why didn't you invest in Eastern Poland" in different contexts.

Origin

On September 7th, 2012, the Polish marketing outlet Marketing Przy Kawie^[1] announced a new campaign Polish Information from the Foreign Investment Agency to encourage economic investment in eastern Poland. The ads featured the tagline "Why didn't you invest in Eastern Poland" and featured three characters: a child, a father-in-law-and a psychotherapist (examples below).

In addition to the television ads, a number of print ads featuring the characters appeared around Europe. All three character appeared in the print ads, with the child (shown below) becoming the most commonly used in the meme, specifically the question "What will you say when your child asks: Why didn't you invest in Eastern Poland."

Spread

On January 25th, 2013, the website Something Awful ^[2] posted the ad as part of "Photoshop Phriday," encouraging users to submit photoshops of the ad (examples below).

Four years later, on November 8th, 2017, Redditor^[4] sylezjusz posted the original advertisement in the /r/Europe subreddit. The garnered more than 29,000 points (92% upvoted and 660 comments in less than one day.

The following day, Redditor ^[3] Empty_Cake_Shop posted a variation of the meme in the /r/MemeEconomy subreddit. The post (shown below) features the child character with an altered tagline, "What will you say when your child asks: why didn't you invest in The porn industry." It received more than 2,100 points (93% upvoted) and 30 comments in less than six hours.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References