Shock Advertising

So I have given you some example of controversial campaign ads. As you see controversial ads do not always contains sex, as you would think. Everything that shocks or surprises you could be labelled as controversial. But what is it exactly then, and why is it used? In this post I would like to talk about what shockvertising actually is.


Wikipedia says: "Shock advertising or Shockvertising is a type of advertising generally regarded as one that “deliberately, rather than inadvertently, startles and offends its audience by violating norms for social values and personal ideals.”
Every day we get bombarded by a huge amount of ads and commercials. Even tough we see all these ads; it doesn’t mean we remember them all. The commercials we do remember had something in it that that was interesting enough (selective perception). Selective perception basically means you only take in what is meaningful to you. A commercial is interesting enough when it is selling something you need, or interested in. Or an ad has nothing to do with you, but you remember them because they are funny, such as the Centraal Beheer Achmea commercials. Commercials that shock people seem to get stuck in memories as well.


So shock advertising is used because it gets trough the selective perception of people. But who came up with using shock advertising? Benetton Group was the first company that was selling their products by shocking people. See my article about Benetton Group.
Many companies took Benetton Groups example and it became a popular tactic. Where Benetton is making social issues discussable, companies such as Calvin Klein just took the opportunity to shock people for no reason, well to get attention.


In the next post I will give you my opinion about controversial ads and shockvertising.