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Controversial advertisements

Now a days, you see them everywhere. Controversy leads to shock, shock leads to word of mouth and word of mouth leads to attention.  The more attention an advertisement or commercial gets, the more benefit the company gets out of it. There is no such thing as bad publicity. So the more you can shock the viewers, the more attention. But then you need to ask yourself a question: What is the limit? To which degree you can get somebody’s attention?

The most used subjects to shock people are definitely on the first place sex and second violence. Also you see social issues that are kind of taboo are being used.

When Mr. Sanders told me that I had to write a blog about a subject that has something to do with marketing, I first didn’t know what to write about. But then I read on the Internet that in The UK they did not show the Beyonce Heat commercial before 20.00 because of the explicit content. The commercial is showing the singer Beyonce who is moving in a seductive way to promote a bottle of perfume called Heat. This made me think. I wasn’t really shocked by the commercial because at first I didn’t really think it was that bad. Yes she is dancing in a seductive way, but it is not more seductive than any other MTV music video. But it made me think: is this really what we want our children to see? Children are very easy to influence, if they see these kind of commercials, it could probably lead to promiscuous behaviour on a later age. They don’t know any better. They are being showed that it is normal for women to act in that way.

In this blog I would like to talk about how the commercials and ads are getting more and more controversial. I will give you a few examples of controversial ads, why are they being used? What does this mean? And what is my opinion about this.

In my next posts I would talk about which ads made me cringe to my stomach or just laugh even though it is really wrong.