The correct use of marketing strategies will really pay off. Brands will become popular and revenues will go up. However, there are some cases where ads or commercials became quite popular as well even if the messaging used was deemed a total failure. In these cases, the ads or commercials paid off, because of the awareness that they bring to the brand.
Believe it or not, there are marketers that really just focus on the brand becoming well-known and yet really don’t care how they accomplish this. To these types of marketers, any press is good press. As long as the brand is talked about, then they have been a success. Well, not quite. For a marketing campaign to become successful, sales must increase because of that campaign. How can sales increase when people find the campaign a joke and just that?
For example, marketers love to use the “in” thing to reach out to the general population and suggest that the brand is “in”. This would be a good idea, but sometimes becoming “in” means to know the true meaning of things.
For example, Celeb Boutique is an online clothing brand that tries to keep on top of what’s trending, or “in”. One day, they noticed that the word ‘Aurora’ was trending on twitter and so shot out the tweet “Aurora is trending, clearly about our Kim K inspired Aurora dress,” with a link to its website for a pleated dress. Little did they know that the reason the word was trending was because of the shooting at the premiere of the latest Batman film. After numerous angry responses, the company apologized, and its reputation had been harmed; however, their name was now world news, and their search volume increased overnight.
In marketing, there are strategies that will work if used properly. Even stirring up some controversy will work if you have the right product and when done at the right time. Unfortunately, doing this can cause very negative results if not done properly.
If a marketer wants to use controversial tactics to increase viewer attention, then they should have a very good foresight. Utterly bad ads and even extremely annoying ads will work for the right products. For example, if you were in a foul mood and you wanted to get rid of something, an ad that was annoying but promoted a service that could take care of annoying things would certainly come into your mind.
However, if you had a product that was supposed to promote rest and relaxation and you paired that with an annoying ad, the ad may become popular because people were talking about how annoying it was, but then, people will certainly not want your product or service when they actually need it.
Creating ads that will stir up controversy is a very risky endeavor. The ad could certainly backfire, and some companies and brands have proven this. As a marketer, you should remember that the adage ‘any press is good press’ is not always true. There are cases when this will work, but majority of cases will be a failure. Market a product not just for publicity but for increased revenues as well.
About the Author: This article was written by James Maloney. James is a freelance marketer, music fanatic and dedicated traveler. You’ll often find him blogging about business, or hanging around Manhattan, pretending to be cool.