Controversy as a Marketing Strategy: Is It a Yay or a Nay?

Controversy as a Marketing Strategy: Is It a Yay or a Nay?

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Marketing has become synonymous with thousands of dollars, rich celebrities, and a general mistrust of brands representing the full picture. But even with a love-hate relationship with it, marketing still holds massive sway over the purchasing behaviors of people. In recent times, the use of controversial or talked about themes has taken over the world of marketing.

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Is it harmlessly following the latest meme, or is there a greater symptom of mindless trend exploitation?

Today we'll read about some of the ways in which Marketers use Controversy as a strategy and some of the ethical implications of it.

What is Controversial Marketing?

There is a lot of competition in today's world for the limited attention span that we can give to advertisers.

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This is why marketers feel the need to distinguish their offerings and be ahead of the curve so that they don't get lost in the sea of promotions.

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Controversial Marketing also called Shock Marketing is a strategy that is used to grab a chunk of the attention by force through deliberately marketing offensive or shocking material that breaks societal norms and standards.

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With the aim of generating buzz and debate, such controversial ads start getting people talking, which many theorists feel is great for the brand – be it beauty products or giant apparel brands.

The point to note about controversial marketing isn't that you just have to go against the flow and say something offensive for the sake of it.

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Many times, marketers can use a controversial or taboo subject even for positive change, in order to highlight a social change that is necessary.

Advantages Shock Marketing when used in the right manner, can be extremely beneficial for a business, and prop them up in these ways:

● Shock Value The immediate shock value of covering a sensitive subject is effective at getting people to talk and generate buzz.

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It is human nature to feel attracted to any sort of drama and controversy.

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Most often, marketers want to capitalize on this curiosity to then communicate their advertising message to the audience.

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Secondly, these controversies can also massively boost your reach. Due to the viral nature of this content, it spreads pretty fast as one person tells another person how offensive this particular ad was!

Controversial campaigns end up gaining lakhs of viewers simply because of being branded and controversial.

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● Emotional Connect Controversies are generated around talking points that are very close and sensitive to the hearts of particular groups of people.

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If an ad talks about workplace harassment, it is no wonder that this resonates with many female workers who do face the struggle every day.

Controversies matter to people because they are a part of our daily lives. This emotional connection is what drives viewers to feel more connected to the brand.

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● Relevance In the extremely noisy and crowded world of marketing, businesses often get lost in the crowd.

Raising up controversy is then one of the only ways for many of them to grab attention.

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Because of their nature, controversial ads end up sticking in our heads for a long time. This automatically boosts the longevity of brand retention.

Disadvantages Needless to say, there are many reasons why a lot of companies do not prefer this kind of marketing.

Some of them are mentioned as follows: Follow us on

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● Hurtful At the heart of every controversy, there is always something that causes offense or distraught to a group of people.

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In and of itself, deliberately hurting the sentiments of a community just to get a wider viewership is ethically incorrect.

Advertisers have to hold themselves to a particular code of conduct and act responsibly towards the public. They simply cannot cause emotional or cultural harm to their ways.

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● Uncertainty No brand drops a controversial marketing strategy hoping that it would backfire. However, ads with even the best of intentions often end up facing massive flak.

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This is true even for innocent ads (such as Surf Excel's Holi ad), so imagine how bad this result can possibly be for marketing that is meant to invoke attention!

This uncertainty of response makes shock advertising an extremely risky venture for most marketers who steer clear from it.

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● Takes Away Attention from the Product Sometimes, the controversy at hand becomes so out of control, that everyone starts talking about the controversy and not the product itself.

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As the end goal of all marketing is to attract customers for the product, if the bill stops at discussions and debates, never connecting the consumer to their products, they will definitely fail.

Instead of telling consumers to buy the product, it becomes a back and forth of conflicting ideas.

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● Damages Brand Identity Being seen as a brand or company that doesn't care about the public and simply wants to generate buzz through whatever means possible is often doom.

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As the spending audience shifts more towards Millenials and Gen Z, these people hold companies to be much more accountable to social values.

This is also why companies adopt green practices, support Pride Month, or veganism to capture these values.

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Ethical Considerations Now that we have established the benefits and drawbacks of using controversy as a marketing strategy, we need to think about ethics.

Do the ends justify the means, no matter the consequences? Definitely not.

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As lucrative and buzz-generating controversial advertising can be, it is still a harmful practice as it directly goes against the corporate and social responsibility that every advertiser has.

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On the other side of this same discussion, many advertisers claim that controversy is not just about getting an audience.

Companies recognize the power that their brands and marketing have, so they deliberately talk about controversial subjects in marketing to bring them to light.

Ad campaigns have often dealt with themes of racism, sexual violence, discrimination, and other social evils.

Their power to highlight these problems in societal norms has been massive in bringing positive change for so many people.

The bottom line is, that even though controversy in marketing is a legitimate strategy, it is only justifiable when used correctly and responsibly.

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