Gunshots and mattresses
Selling products is a tough job.
Selling products is a tough job. You have to convince people to buy things they may not even need or cannot afford and sometimes break away from brands they have been loyal to for decades. The difference between success and failure can often come down to an ad campaign, which is why companies pour millions into the ad industry, hoping they can generate the buzz that will take them to success.
But that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes ads are just bad. It happens. Advertising is a hit-and-miss industry. The problem arises when ads are not just bad, not just awful, but outright offensive.
Now offensive doesn’t always mean bad. At the end of the day, it is all about the product and how the ad convinces its target audience to either start buying or keep buying something.
Suggestive, innuendo filled ads for certain products may do well among the target audiences for some products, as long as local culture is considered, because that is what determines where the line is drawn.
That is also why advertising for contraceptives in some countries can push the envelope, while in Pakistan, and generally in South Asia, for many years, the viewer was left to wonder why the family planning department was paying to advertise swing sets.
Death and violence can also ‘sell’, such as the anti-war Unicef ad in which the entire Smurf village gets carpet-bombed. But they don’t do well at selling family products, even more so when the ad makes light of the attempted murder of a real, living child.
The ‘Kurl On mattress Malala’ ad from across the border was part of a campaign showing people rising to greatness from adversity, but unlike the other two people featured — Gandhi and Steve Jobs — and with all due respect to the gentlemen’s remarkable achievements, getting kicked off a train or fired from your own company are trivial compared to being shot in the face.
The campaign was supposed to be about rising from adversity. Instead, it makes bloodshed a mockery. The ad agency has since apologised, and essentially admitted to a glaring oversight in its approval system which they claim to be re-examining now.
But why hasn’t the manufacturer apologised yet? Yes, the agency made it, but it is common practice to see what you’re paying for before airing or publishing it. What was the in-house marketing team thinking when it gave the go-ahead to such a tasteless ad? The buck stops where the order starts.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 20th, 2014.
But that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes ads are just bad. It happens. Advertising is a hit-and-miss industry. The problem arises when ads are not just bad, not just awful, but outright offensive.
Now offensive doesn’t always mean bad. At the end of the day, it is all about the product and how the ad convinces its target audience to either start buying or keep buying something.
Suggestive, innuendo filled ads for certain products may do well among the target audiences for some products, as long as local culture is considered, because that is what determines where the line is drawn.
That is also why advertising for contraceptives in some countries can push the envelope, while in Pakistan, and generally in South Asia, for many years, the viewer was left to wonder why the family planning department was paying to advertise swing sets.
Death and violence can also ‘sell’, such as the anti-war Unicef ad in which the entire Smurf village gets carpet-bombed. But they don’t do well at selling family products, even more so when the ad makes light of the attempted murder of a real, living child.
The ‘Kurl On mattress Malala’ ad from across the border was part of a campaign showing people rising to greatness from adversity, but unlike the other two people featured — Gandhi and Steve Jobs — and with all due respect to the gentlemen’s remarkable achievements, getting kicked off a train or fired from your own company are trivial compared to being shot in the face.
The campaign was supposed to be about rising from adversity. Instead, it makes bloodshed a mockery. The ad agency has since apologised, and essentially admitted to a glaring oversight in its approval system which they claim to be re-examining now.
But why hasn’t the manufacturer apologised yet? Yes, the agency made it, but it is common practice to see what you’re paying for before airing or publishing it. What was the in-house marketing team thinking when it gave the go-ahead to such a tasteless ad? The buck stops where the order starts.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 20th, 2014.