By Rob McLaren, Insights Manager
It’s the economy, stupid. The timeless words of James Carville, master political strategist, coined during the 1992 presidential campaign are often repeated today. Why did Donald Trump return to the White House? It was the economy, stupid. Why are his party now behind in the polls? It’s the economy, stupid. Why is the current UK Government so unpopular? You get the gist.
If advertising had its own equivalent phrase, it would probably be “It’s attention, stupid”. For all the changes in the marketing landscape over the past fifty years, as media time fragments and new platforms spring up faster than you can say “disruption”, the core goal at the heart of campaigns has not changed: to get as many people as possible viewing your ad, and to make the message compelling enough that they don’t want to look away.
When people are losing interest in an ad after 1.3 seconds, and with half of ads barely registering an emotional response, it’s little surprise that many brands turn to shock-jock advertising to gain an advantage in the attention war.
So-called “shockvertising” was back in the headlines recently after online healthcare brand Voy launched a provocative campaign about male hormones. Though the ads were criticized by some as misogynistic, the ASA, after receiving 33 complaints, chose not to investigate. Voy, seemingly defiant, suggested the campaign was the first of many aiming to “bring awareness to typically stigmatised” topics.
That is something that the late Oliviero Toscani, art director of Benetton for two decades, made a hallmark of the Italian fashion brand’s campaigns in the 90s and 00s. From depictions of HIV Positive subjects to an interracial lesbian couple, Benetton’s campaigns were often devoid of products, prone to controversy – and highly successful.
What is notable about the Benetton campaigns is how noncontroversial many feel today. So too the Yves Saint Laurent poster depicting a naked Sophie Dahl, at the time one of the most complained about ever. What is shocking in one era can feel distinctly ordinary in the next, as cultural taboos shift.
Indeed, taking ASA complaints as an imperfect metric, the most shocking are often those which simply grind people’s gears, like a 2005 KFC Zinger ad which broke complaint records, but not rules. What shocks consumers is often not depiction of a controversial subject, but something brash enough to make them look up from their dinner with disgust. Enough to capture their attention, for good or bad.
At least, that used to be the case. In today’s online landscape, the average social media user scrolls past a myriad of shocking posts every single day. The disgust that once accompanied Benetton’s depiction of world leaders kissing is nonexistent in a world where AI generates a million such images daily.
Shock-jock advertising can still have a powerful impact when executed correctly. Charities have long since deployed the tactic to draw attention to a cause, such as CALM’s award-winning “Last Photo” campaign – although some research suggests even charities are using it less. Outside of charities, brands have often combined shockvertising with humour to drive cultural saliency. Doing so requires the topics to be appropriate and the jokes to be funny, however. Numan’s attempt worked well. Brewdog’s did not.
Undoubtedly, shockvertising lives on, but its ability to – and the topics which – shock will be fluid. In an era of infinite obscenity, provocation is no longer a shortcut for originality. It’s about attention, stupid, but it also has to be good.
