Table of Contents
A. What is Controversial Marketing?
B. Different Types of Controversial Marketing
C. Potential Effects of Controversial Marketing
C.1 Pros of Controversial Marketing
C.2 Cons of Controversial Marketing
D. Brands that involved in Controversial Marketing
D.1 Brands that were successful in doing so
D.2 Brands that failed in doing so
E. How to effectively use Controversial Marketing as a campaign
F. Calculated Risks
G. Conclusion
When Pepsi first set out to introduce its brand, it launched with a big boom in China. Pepsi launched its drinks accompanied by a slogan – "Pepsi Brings You Back To Life." Yet, with the faulty Mandarin adaptation, "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave," shadowed Pepsi into a bad light, in a country where ancestors significantly impact the culture. Humour is good, but not when the scenario deals with social issues like violence and racism. However, Pepsi unquestionably had to pull out due to the global opposition it received.
Every marketing campaign aims at generating awareness for the brand, and for that, the marketers create content that forms an impact on the audience. Every coin has two sides, and similarly, there are two kinds of audience perspectives. One can be in favour of the issue that marketers raise in marketing, and the other can be against the issue.
Controversial marketing means deliberately designing promotional content that is likely to develop an argument, agitate debates, and offend the audience. The reason for the strategy being controversial is that it violates the beliefs, sentiments, and values of a particular society. Controversial marketing might be a success or not, but the fact that cannot be denied is that it gives immense popularity to a brand.
Types of Controversial Marketing
Controversial marketing is a very broad term with numerous aspects to it. While the basic idea is to create controversy among the public, there are several ways of doing that.
These may include:
• disregard for tradition or laws
• some nude or vulgar sexual content promoting obscenity
• define social and moral codes
• define religious and political norms
• simply displaying texts or images promoting horrible or repulsive ideas.
1. Shocking campaigns:
In these kinds of campaigns, the brand in question focuses on a social norm that has been existing for decades and breaks that myth. This shocks the audience and that is how they get aware of the brand in question. These involve social issues which are presented in a way to entice the customer into rethinking their lives.
2. Taboo campaigns:
This particular approach includes topics like female menstruation and has proved to be very successful because there were so many taboos existing in the society that these advertising campaigns are now targeting upon and breaking the myths.
3. Debatable campaigns:
Most controversial ideas would fall under this umbrella. For these topics, the content presents data from both sides of an argument and lets readers drive the discussion. Consequently, the debatable campaigns bear word of mouth; more the discussion, more will be the engagement with the public and more will the brand-in-question be engaged.
Potential Effects of Controversial Marketing
Pros
This is where we come to the most valuable part of this topic, it is needed to be known where controversial marketing is attracting a positive effect on brands, or whether there is any positivity at all.
Here are a few pros of controversial marketing.
1. Draws Attention
In today’s social media-dominated world where everyone is always on their phones and has the space to express their opinions, controversial marketing will stir up conversations about your brand and aid in drawing attention.
2. Creates Brand Awareness
When people start talking, more people will ultimately find out about the brand and it will help in publicity, especially if it is a brand with a smaller budget.
3. Appeals to the right target audience
If your market is on the edgy side, a controversial marketing campaign is likely to resonate with them more than a traditional one could. This can help foster a better connection between them and your brand.
4. Elicits emotion
The brands touch on those sensitive issues that affect people’s emotions. If the audience connects emotionally with any brand, then it can work in favour of the brand.
Cons
Once a brand knows the cons of some characteristic of marketing, it will be fully equipped for the consequences before leaping into a new frontier.
Here are the few unavoidable impediments of controversial marketing.
1. Can Be Divisive
Public opinion might be split when a marketing campaign is launched. This could lead to a fraction of the public supporting your brand even more, while others adopt a more negative take.
2. Could Lose Customers
The risk of losing customers is always on the top-notch, should they decide that they’re offended by the controversial marketing efforts while not dealing with it properly might damage the brand totally and people will start choosing the brand’s competitors in the market.
3. Can Lead To More Work
There will be a need to address the concerns of the people voicing their opinions and for that additional time and resources would be needed.
4. Hurt people's sentiments
When a brand challenges the conventional and already existing social and political norms, there are certain groups of people that are bound to get offended.
Accordingly, controversial marketing stunts are certainly a gamble but as they say in business: the higher the risk, the higher the reward. The secret is to find the sweet spot between being edgy and purposeful. There is a need to back up the campaign with meaning and substance so that people are not provoked for no good reason.
Brands that involved Controversial Marketing
The following are some of the brands which used controversial marketing as their advertising technique and how the market treated them for the same.
Brands that failed in a controversial marketing
Here are a few of the controversial ads that sparked negation in the general public and discoursed apologies!
1. Heineken's tagline blunder
While marketing its light beer, Heineken started using the tagline ‘sometimes, lighter is better.' Although the tagline is in-offensive by itself, the 30-second TV ad showed a bartender sliding a beer past three black people to a lighter-skinned woman. Many dubbed the TV ad racist (understandably). Having a distinguished voice who amplifies criticism of the marketing campaign, is one of the quickest ways for a brand to come under pressure.
2. Dove’s - Lotion Ad
In 2017, Dove released a social media ad on their Facebook page of a black woman “transforming” into a white woman. The advert showed a black woman removing her top to reveal a white woman underneath after using Dove’s body lotion. Not only was this advertisement racist, but it’s also insulting to viewers. Have a look at the same.
3. PETA - Save The Whales
This ad is the perfect example of how not to market yourself. Likely the worst part about this ad is that it was intentionally made offensive. Most people are left wondering what was going through the heads of marketers at PETA when they came up with this shameful ad, but, guess it'll never be known. It is perfectly safe to assume this ad campaign didn’t go too well.
4. H&M isn’t the king of the jungle
In January 2018, clothing retailer H&M got into very hot water after casting an African-American boy to model its new hoodie with the message “Coolest Monkey in The Jungle”. Following the incident, H&M released an apology stating, “Our position is simple and unequivocal — we have got this wrong and we are deeply sorry."
Brands that we're successful in Controversial Marketing
Delve into these 4 edgy and decidedly non-traditional campaigns to see how they broke the contour and found success.
1. Nike’s “Believe in Something.”
Nike’s ad featuring ex-NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who inspired a player protest movement by kneeling during the national anthem during games, as the centre of their “Believe in Something” campaign was one of the most controversial ads in recent memory. The campaign proved to be incredibly successful, especially among Millennial and Gen Z consumers who want their brands to take a stand on social justice issues.
2. Burger King’s “Whopper Neutrality.”
This fast-food chain known for quick and tasty hamburgers waded into a complicated topic like net neutrality, through a commercial based on the hypothesis that customers would need to pay a premium in addition to the normal price for their food if they wanted to get their meals quickly by calling it “Whopper Neutrality.”
With an average of 286,000 views on YouTube, “Whopper Neutrality” got more than 4.6 million views with 127,000 likes vs. 10,000 dislikes -- a very positive ratio.
3. Gillette’s “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be.”
Gillette's “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be” ad had nothing to do with shaving, beards or even personal grooming. Instead, it challenged stereotypes and “toxic masculinity.” When a well-establish shaving company tumbled into the fray of the #MeToo movement to promote a new kind of positive masculinity, it amassed both praise and scorn, but it also immediately went viral and now has more than 30 million views. While people either seemed to love it or hate it, overall it led to unprecedented levels of media coverage and customer engagement.
4. Airbnb's #WeAccept
Airbnb formulated a campaign where the commercial shows a montage of faces of different nationalities blending into one another, with text that reads, “We believe no matter who you are, where you’re from, who you love or who you worship, we all belong. The world is more beautiful the more you accept."
It highlighted Airbnb’s commitment to providing short-term housing for people in need, including refugees, victims of natural disasters and aid workers, garnering 33,000 tweets in the busy season of the Super Bowl, more than any other advertiser, and the majority were overwhelmingly positive.
How to effectively use Controversial Marketing as a campaign
After considering everything, hosting multiple brainstorms, re-writing copy and finding imagery, an advertisement can be on YouTube in less than five minutes, on the website in fewer than that while it could be out in seconds if published across social media channels but before any marketer hits enter and scatter it into cyberspace, the following should be considered:
1. Put it up for a focus group review.
Should a small group of people that are being paid by the firm be upset or a large group of people that pay them? The idea here is to hire a third-party agency that can conduct a focus group to give an insight into how the ad would work once it's published.
2. Consider all possible outcomes.
With the focus group, it's easier to predict the reactions that the audience would give. The access to knowing how the positive conclusions would work and formulating plans for unfavourable criticism would be susceptible.
3. Don’t necessarily pick any side.
Instead of taking the risk of alienating a segment of the audience, points of conversation can be offered that could further drive an intelligent discussion. Sometimes, stirring the conversation about a contentious topic is sufficient which provides exposure without extensive backlash.
4. Widen perspectives.
Trying to encourage the audience to tackle a controversial subject from a more compassionate point of view and inspiring people to look at things from a different perspective can powerfully resonate with them.
Calculated Risks
As one can see from the examples above, controversial marketing always entails risks. But to alleviate such, there is a need to have a perfect understanding of the target audience.
One can't always please everyone but if they can see that the message is founded on the core values of the firm advertising and not just done to jump on a bandwagon (see: Pepsi), then there’s a good chance for the controversial marketing to resonate with the people with whom the companies foster a connection with.
Conclusion
All said and done, there is no doubt that controversial marketing is the trend nowadays and a lot of brands are adopting this form of marketing. With digital media booming like never before, it becomes easier for brands to even market the campaigns along with the products or the ideas. This surely generates a buzz among the public, with apologies included, no cap.
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