One man’s belly laugh is another man’s blasphemy

You know you’re a little, shall we say, off the mark when CNN’s Keith Olbermann in a spitting rage condemns your ad as the worst-ever-what-were-they-thinking piece of loathsome garbage they have ever had the displeasure to see. That pretty well encapsulates what CNN and about 10,000 other highly influential media sources had to say about WWF’s 9/11 ad.
I’m guessing that spot isn’t going to be the proud lead-in spot on the agency’s new business reel.
We often seem like a delusional lot in advertising. In our attempts to create messages that stand out from the flotsam of sameness out there, we’ll occasionally create work that not so much steps over the line as takes an LeBron James leap beyond it. We want to captivate, to be transformative in our messages, to be remembered. Sometimes our ads go way too far in an environment where an awful lot of our work just doesn’t go far enough.
Believe me it happens to all of us. I have seen the most innocuous TV spots launch a battalion of condemnative letter writing. We created a car commercial where a 120 pound model/actress tosses a 200 pound hunky actor in the back of a car and were accused of depicting the crime of kidnapping. And, yes, on a different occasion I was called a Blasphemer. A word I had only previously encountered in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
People can sure be touchy. And there’s an entire phalanx of them poised by their keyboards eager to send out that incendiary missive toward the advertiser that offends their delicate sensibilities.
There’s no surefire way to avoid ever offending but there are some things to be aware of when creating campaigns that might be a little on the edge.

You’re an easy target—Hard as it may be to believe, there are people out there that actually can’t stand advertising. They’re waiting for a gotcha moment so they can give a piece of their mind to the chairman. If you’re going to advertise, just accept that fact that some people are never going to like what you have to say, no matter how innocuously you say it.

You’re can’t hide advertising—Get this in your head: everybody sees everything. Just because you are advertising, say, Axe deodorant spray via the prurient interests of teenage boys doesn’t mean that someone won’t see an inherent contradiction with that and your other quite famous campaign, the Dove Campaign for real beauty. Same company with diametrically opposed views of the world. Somebody’s going to call you on it. Be prepared. It’s not the end of the world. The planet is full of contradictions.

HEADS UP! INCOMING!—No one likes to be caught flat-footed. Least of all heads of public corporations. They may not share your devil may care, c’est la vie, whoopsy attitude towards negative press. If there’s a possibility of controversy, have that conversation up front. Right to the top. Bring in the PR people and have a strategy to manage the potential issue. When Apple launched the Macintosh with their 1984 ad (I know I’m going back to the dark ages) a lot of people were horrified. But Steve Jobs expected and embraced the publicity, both negative and positive, that it engendered. They were ready for it. They had a vision of the bigger picture.

You are in the Persuasion business not the Entertainment business—You can watch TV all night and see an endless parade of corpses, deviant behavior, vulgarity and irreverence. And you may be tempted to think that great advertising should simply mirror the contemporary culture that most influences us. That’s what people like, right? That’s what audiences respond to, right? Yes, but…
Advertising for whatever reason is held to a much different standard than the programming that surrounds it. You just can’t go as far as what would easily be acceptable in an average comedy or drama show. Don’t ask me why this is. I don’t really know. It just is.

Great advertising IS polarizing—I truly believe if you create great advertising with a strong point of view, you’re going to piss somebody off. Any insight into the mind of a teenage boy brilliantly executed will, for example, offend some group of parents somewhere. Will you get letters? Likely. Will it create a strong brand among your target? Absolutely. I believe, you have to do what’s right for the business and go for it.
There is always risk in advertising. Risk and reward are what make advertising and business in general as exciting as it is. The only way to win is to embrace risk. The biggest risk of all is to spend all that money and have no one notice.
And that to me is blasphemy.