Controversial Advertising

Controversial advertising is a form of communication that is shocking, offensive, unethical, politically incorrect and humorous. It can be open to interpretation.

Most common product category offenders:

·Alcohol

·Fashion

·Government

·Not for profit

Objectives:

·Attention grabbing
·Word of mouth/viral

·Stays in your head

Advertisement: AMI- “Want longer lasting sex” Billboards
Cited from: http://counterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/bonk-longer.jpg
Sourced on: 04/08/2010

General information

This campaign was used alot by Ooh!media group,  an advertising company that focuses on the “out of home industry”. When I looked at their website I found galleries of other billboards they have produced with slogans such as “Spank those Naughty oxidants” for Vitamin Water and “Sex and the Gritty” for Bisley Workwear. Ooh! is one of the major players in the out of home industry and knows what works and what doesnt, as they say on their website “When you see a large format sign on a highway, there’s a 97% chance its one of ours”.

The AMI billboard advertisements such as this one have popped up over the past couple of years (2007 onward) and have been placed on very busy roads and intersections.
Target Audience:
Women and men over the age of 18 who are suffering with the issue of impotency.

Objectives:

The combination of placement and the bright colouring of the advertisement itself ensures that they are attention grabbing and creating a sense of awkwardness, which sticks in the consumer’s head.

Nature of the controversy

The ads feature words alluding to the issue of impotency. This issue put so blatantly is what makes it controversial. 

My Opinion

 While I maintain this was the exact idea of the campaign and I think it was a fantastic way to get the product out there, I personally do not like the ad. I was quite shocked the first time I saw this. I was shocked because I thought it was incredibly inappropriate to put such a blatant sexual ad in non-segmented areas. By putting these billboards near busy roads it ensures that everyone sees it, including little children on their way to school. People seem to agree with me as when I researched further into this advertisement I found that 110 complaints have been made to the Advertising Standards Bureau and there is a Facebook group with 97 members against it. 

Advertisement: Kotex Beaver TVC

Cited from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkkTeAP8d5o

Sourced on: 04/08/2010

General Information

The advertisement features a female in her mid 20’s carrying an animated toy beaver around during what is considered a normal day. This style of execution is slice of life mixed with humor appeals. The catch phrase at the end is “you only have one”.

Target Audience:
Menstruating young to middle aged women, most likely between the ages of 16 and 40.
Objectives:

I think the objective of the advertising would be to shock a little bit resulting in word of mouth communication creating a buzz, and thus increasing the awareness of the brand itself. Kotex.

Nature of the controversy

This is controversial as it the beaver is a double meaning for womens private parts.

My Opinion

Being a girl I think this is possibly less controversial to me. I think it was conducted in a relatively humorous and jovial way and I personally thought it was quite clever. I can see how people who are more conservative may have issues with this ad, but generally I don’t think it was intended as being overtly controversial. If children saw this advertisement on television I’m sure they wouldn’t even understand the double meaning of it. With that being said I found that there was 185+ complaints made about this advertisement to the Advertising standards Bureau, all claims however have been dismissed, as they were not in breach of any ethical standards.

Advertisement: Tourism Australia “where the bloody hell are you” TVC

Cited from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn0lwGk4u9o

Sourced on: 4/08/2010

Target Audience:
People overseas considering a holiday. 

Objectives:

I think the objective of this advertisement was to capture the Australian way of life in a humour and imagry execution style, with the use of “Aussie language”. I don’t believe the advertisement was intending to be as controversial as it turned out to be.

Nature of the controversy

The use of the catch phrase at the end “where the bloody hell are you” is abit too overt for some over seas markets and was banned in the UK in 2006 which sparked the controversy.

My Opinion:

As an Australian watching that an I feel a sense of pride, I like that the ad shows off the Australian culture and people not just the tourist locations. I think that Australians are controversial because we are deemed to be a little bit more “crass” maybe than other cultures. While this ad was banned in Brittain, the classic musical Pricilla Queen of the desert, which I saw in the West End in January I was told you either love it or hate it. That’s just the personality of Australians. We are an acquired taste, and I don’t think we mean any harm by the words bloody hell, but then again they’re not out of context in Australia, where as in Britain people are different.  

Trade Press: 

Record number of tourists answer "bloody hell'

November 13, 2008, The Age

The "Where the bloody hell are you" campaign has been a success with a record number of tourists entering Australia last year, a Senate hearing was told today.

But Australian tourism does face a challenge in the global market from cheap short-haul holiday packages.

Geoff Buckley, managing director at Tourism Australia told the hearing that hits on its australia.com website had increased 30 per cent since the "Where the bloody hell are you" advertisement campaign started nearly a year ago.

Tourism Australia also has been tracking consumer awareness of the ad, which has also drawn positive results.

He said they were making some refinements to the ending of the advert, which features Lara Bingle, bringing in an indigenous Australian actress.

"Lara Bingle hasn't been dropped from the campaign, and hasn't been dropped from the advertising. She is still within the footage, we have just changed some of the people doing the end linings.

Incoming tourism to Australia grew 0.6 per cent in 2006 to a record 5.5 million people, with a notable 8.2 per cent increase from China and a 4.2 per cent growth from South Korea.

There were 308,000 tourists from China, reflecting an easing in Chinese regulations.

"It's just boomed in the past couple of years," said Mr Buckley.

The Barmy Army also helped to swell the ranks of British tourists, growing 3.6 per cent to watch the Ashes cricket series.

But Japanese tourism slumped 5.0 per cent.

"It's been a tough year for that key market for tourism." he said.

This was partly due to a strengthening Australian dollar, particularly when major holiday packages were being put together last April.

The dollar has risen 50 per cent against the yen in the past five years, the hearing was told.

There also has been a rise in short-haul holidays from Japan to China and South Korea.

The hearing was told inbound tourism to Australia represents one per cent of global long-term tourism, but there is a very strong push for short-haul holiday due to cut price air travel.

The Age (2008) Record number of tourists answer "bloody hell". Sourced from: http://www.theage.com.au/travel/record-number-of-tourists-answer-bloody-hell-20081113-62cf.html

Write up:

This article helps to illustrate the effectiveness of the campaign. The article states even “Tourism Australia also has been tracking consumer awareness of the ad, which has also drawn positive results”. So while there was controversy overseas over the use of language, it still has achieved its goal in the end. I chose this article because it shows that while controversial advertising is well, controversial, it does work. 

Journal Article: 

Waller, D. (2005). A proposed response model for controversial advertising. Journal of Promotion Management.

Write up:

This article attempts to conceptualize the practice of controversial advertising in order to create a model for which to make “a contribution to marketing theory” (Waller, 2005). The way in which this article differs from others is that it discusses the various positive results of controversial advertising as well as the negative ones.

I chose this article because I thought it gave good insight into the process of and the effect that controversial advertising can have, both positive and negative. Using the buyer response steps a model was developed so as to understand the way in which consumers can go through the process of exposureà processing, communication effects and actions. I think this could prove to be useful for the category of controversial advertising as it lays out that there can be positive reactions to controversial ads.