Marketing communications are, by their very nature, a complex mixture of excitement, tedium, confusion, and controversy. With advertising in particular, it is often the case that people can spend as long or longer speaking to each other about the adverts that they watched than they do about prime time television programming. How marketing communications are perceived is often subject to the ideas, associations and value systems of each receiver. This can result in multiple readings of one advert, or any other form of communication, thus making it incredibly difficult to break through the ‘noise’ of other communications, achieve awareness, and if applicable, motivate purchase, subscription or adoption.
But the notion of the ‘any publicity is good publicity’ theory as some kind of panacea to be used by marketing practitioners wishing to break through that noise has long since been ridiculed, at least within a broad spread of academic literature if not within mainstream media.
Therefore it is with great curiosity, and more than hint of disappointment, that some marketing practitioners continue to feel that the most creative way to promote a brand is to offend. I make this point with the bookmaker Paddy Power in mind, and one of its most recent television adverts featuring a blind football team who kick a cat into tree having mistaken it for their football (see below).
Whether or not the creative team behind this advert intended it to be offensive is a matter open to conjecture. However, according to The Guardian newspaper on 21st July 2010, the United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority had until that date received one thousand and eighty-nine complaints, making the advert the fifth most complained about in the history of the ASA. Inevitably, opinion on this advert was and still remains mixed, but I still found particularly surprising the ASA deeming the advert not offensive. This aside, even if the advert achieved greater awareness for Paddy Power, that does not mean that it has achieved an increase in positive brand equity. Without proper trials and good market research, what could possibly make any creative team think that abuse of animals – real or fictional – could be good for a brand or organisation? Consider then the efforts of employees of a leisure firm in Russia who, as part of a ‘public relations exercise’, forced a donkey to parasail over the sea (see below).
As before, I understand that any judgements on any form of marketing activity must be left open-ended, as opinions and reactions are normally too many to be conclusive. Yet, I fail to fathom what promotional stunts such as the above can achieve for brands concerning positive equity. That a frightened animal should have to perform a distressing act which it cannot understand, all for the sake of a marketing ‘stunt’, is at best supremely stupid, and at worst, horribly cruel. Even in the case of the Paddy Power advert, I would argue that the supposed act of physically abusing an animal is in this instance not only humourised, but sanitised.
Moreover, concerning the blind footballers, the most offensive aspect to that is not the site of blind people playing football. This should be considered a joyous event, and one which should earn its brave participants great respect and admiration. Rather, what makes that offensive is that in order to make the advert funny, it was deemed necessary for blind footballers to be the catalyst for the advert. In other words, these footballers were not featured in the advert so that viewers could look at them and think ‘wow, they’re amazing’. No, they were there as pawns to realise the childish and half-witted ideas of a creative team. Why should this be? Are we to conclude from this that blind people are so oafish and incapable as to be unable to tell the difference between the sound a cat bell and the sound of a bell within a football? Might it not have been possible for a footballer with perfect sight to miss the ball and kick the cat by accident as it darted across him? Ultimately it is a desperately weak concept for an advert, no matter how long one deliberates over it.
It would be both wrong and unforgivably crude to assume that marketing is the problem, or that marketing as a discipline and profession is somehow to blame for acrid texts such as those highlighted in this posting. Thus, we should not consider it the bogey man, or some kind of pantomime villain to be booed every time it comes on stage. Marketing communications need not be all about motivating purchase, and in fact have the capacity for achieving tremendous good – it is simply down to the intentions of those using them.
I sympathise with all marketing professionals who are struggling to find a way to be new, exciting and innovative, and are finding that such traits are virtually impossible to achieve. I am also greatly aware – though in no way willing to condone – that marketing professionals are often acting out the will of their clients, often having limited creative input. And it may well be the case that, realistically, everything that could be said, done and pitched already has been. Whether or not the answer to this can be found in creativity and respect is something to be given far greater consideration. One thing does at least appear plain: the answers will not be found in cruelty and ridicule.
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