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Do your communications have enough bite?

Or how to make a significant impact on your target market at the risk of shocking the rest of the population!

Even though the media is increasingly diverse and constantly presents new opportunities for advertisers, articulating the right message and offering brand experiences that are relevant to your target market can be a very difficult task today. We like to use the phrase "creeping segmentation" to describe the growing diversity of consumer values, motivations and lifestyles that can be found in today's markets. Unanimous, universal messages are becoming increasingly rare and it is increasingly difficult to find a brand promise and performance in communications that can effectively target the market being addressed while having maximum positive resonance or at least "acceptability" with the rest of the population.

Many marketing experts will tell you that this is not really important, what is crucial is to be able to reach the target audience on an emotional level and if the message resonates less well with audiences that are less targeted by the brand, that’s too bad, but it is of secondary importance. The priority is to correctly approach the target around which the business model was built. But what about situations where the values and motivations of a target group are relatively, if not diametrically, opposed to those of the rest of the population and the messages, communications and brand promises targeted on these priority segments are in conflict with the rest of the citizens? A brief review of the advertising world will answer this question through some rather extreme examples that have appeared in recent months and have justified contemplating this subject.

The first and very eloquent example that was brought to our attention is the case of a British ice cream company whose brand, Antonio Federici, focused their campaign on "Italian sensuality." This brand of premium ice cream is specifically aimed at a market segment that could be called "Foodies", consumers whose eating habits are very sophisticated and who highly value the taste experience. In their branding and communications, the brand chose to focus on this much-appreciated "sensuality" and, by extension, the guilty pleasure that could be metaphorically triggered. In this context, one of the ads in the campaign showed a photo of a visibly pregnant nun indulging in the guilty pleasure of eating Federici ice cream with the caption, "Immaculately Conceived″, which played cleverly on Christian mythology. Obviously, in this specific case, the metaphor is quite justified: guilty pleasure, pleasure that can make us gain weight, pleasure that might transgress certain constraints... We can detect that a hedonistic self-indulgence is suggested by this brand experience and the metaphor of the pregnant nun was therefore entirely appropriate, especially when we consider the values of consumers targeted by this type of advertisement. Indeed, these sophisticated food consumers called Foodies are also very critical socially; they are very individualistic and highly focused on their personal pleasure. They are significantly distanced from institutions, especially religious institutions. All in all, this metaphor of the pregnant nun was very pertinent to this particular clientele – might we say, absolutely "delicious". However, a problem occurred: a portion of the British public who are more fundamentalist about religious matters found the advertisement very insulting and objected to it. They found it sacrilegious, an advertisement that should be banned. As a result, a public crisis exploded in England, forcing the company to retract the ad from the media.

Here we have a very eloquent case where the communications were perfected targeted on the intended clientele, making a wonderful ″spiritual″ metaphor and proposing a brand experience absolutely aligned with the values and motivations of the target audience by referring to guilty pleasure; in other words, all the elements were there to make a perfect emotional connection with the target consumers. On the other hand, however, these same communications provoked a virulent enough opposition from a segment of the population whose power was heavily felt throughout the media.

The first reflex of any good marketer would be to advise the company not to retract the ad, to in fact create as much agitation as possible around the controversy. ″Even bad press is good press!″ is one of the fundamental principles of communications, marketing and publicity. All arguments would have advocated letting the crisis worsen to ensure maximum visibility for this campaign so perfectly targeted on its customers. We can of course understand that for the board of directors of any company, other forces come into play, other interests may be taken into consideration and ultimately, these forces can counteract marketing strategies that were developed at great cost. What can we do in such situations? It is interesting to note that when the company retracted this ad from the media, it immediately appeared on the Internet. What followed was an online media outcry that was probably as, if not more, powerful than if we had left the ad in the newspapers and magazines where it had originally appeared. The question is therefore how to manage divergent interests.

Many cases such as this one have appeared over the course of the last few months. For example, the Montreal Casino wanted to launch an online ad with the goal of attracting players from the North-Eastern United States. In order to do this, the company used a cartoon emphasizing the chest of a young woman who was sitting at a game table (and saying ″nice pair″). This picture shocked a large portion of the Quebec population who are more aligned with feminist values. However, if we consider the sociocultural profile of the average casino player, this ad would not be shocking to them at all. On the contrary, the majority of the Casino’s clientele looks well upon traditional gender roles and surely appreciated this type of ad with a smile.

Finally, let us cite the case of the CKAC radio station, which, wanting to promote their reports on the women’s tennis tournament held last summer in Montreal, ran an ad featuring a photo of a model representing a tennis player who was in the midst of lifting her dress and showing her anatomy. Once again, this ad shocked some Quebecers. We must note here that if one looks at the sociocultural profile of the average sports fan in Quebec, and particularly that of the public targeted by a media outlet such as CKAC, this type of advertising is very much aligned with the values of these individuals, even if they are fundamentally in conflict with the respect that a developed society like ours today should have toward women!

One could compile a long list of examples like those we just cited, all of them featuring communications and promises of brand experiences that are perfectly targeted on the values and motivations of the market segments that they aim to connect with, but they clash with cherished principles of other parts of the population, or even with those of the vast majority of citizens of a society (as CKAC learned at their expense!).

Nevertheless, we are required here to take the advertiser’s/marketer's perspective: it is perhaps better to shock some people – within certain limits – and provoke a negative impact than to have an advertisement that pleases everyone, but resonates with no one. Today’s average consumer is bombarded every day with countless stimuli regarding brands, products and services that are being offered. In this sea of media stimulation, capturing people's attention, making an impact, creating emotion, is quite difficult due to the level of saturation that affects the consumer because of incessant advertising stimuli. We must therefore create communications that have bite, that distinguish themselves, that will create a major impact and capture people’s attention. Therefore, the priority is definitely to reach the target upon which the company’s business model was built, even if it shocks the rest or certain segments of the population.

We can only hope that from time to time the marketing department of all companies will have the last word among the management and that they will be allowed to create an impact, or at least create an impact for long enough that if the advertisements are retracted from the media, they can continue to live stealthily via the Internet.

 

By CROP