How to Master Offensive Advertising Be clever, be responsible, be controversial!

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Words: Roxanne Gray

Imagine a scene that portrays a wealthy white woman stroking a black boy like a pet, feeding him the crumbs of her cake and letting him lick her fingers. This is one of the scenes from a television commercial created by Ogilvy & Mather for the organisation Feed a Child. Are you shocked, impressed or not interested?

The Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASA) defines an offensive advertisement as an advertisement which consists of content that is likely to cause serious or widespread offence, especially on the grounds of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation or disability. The Feed a Child advertisement sparked widespread reaction on social media for its controversial portrayal of a white woman feeding a black child like a dog. The advertising agency has since withdrawn the commercial and Feed a Child has published a formal apology. However, even if the advert prompted complaints, the ASA, an independent body which ensures that its efficient system of self-regulation results in the best possible protection for both the consumer and the marketing and communications industry. It says it is satisfied that in terms of Section 36 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, offensive advertising is a form of freedom of expression that is protected. Therefore, the advertising code limits advertising freedom insofar as the limitations of Section 36. What this means is that the offensive advertising provisions are not formulated with sufficient precision to constitute an enforceable contract term.

A subjective issue

The ASA has the difficult task of having to deal with the subjective perception of consumers while still remaining objective. The ASA does this based on the context, medium, audience, product and prevailing standards of decency. If an advert is offensive to a group of individuals, this alone is not grounds to remove an ad.

Mpumi Mda, Communication Officer at the ASA, confirms that offensive advertising is a subjective issue and therefore it is difficult to set a minimum standard. She also specifies that adherence to the code by advertisers ensures the wellbeing of consumers.

‘The ASA is reactive and not proactive, this means that in order for the ASA to investigate, a complaint must be made by a third party.’ she says.

As advertising is mass communication, it is difficult to control because it affects everyone not only the target audience. It is all the more the case nowadays when the consumer is taking control of advertising through social media.

Advertisers often use elements intended to manipulate consumers towards a pre-designed end. Similar to brainwashing, certain techniques in advertising compel a person’s brain to build associations it wouldn’t normally make and act in impulsive ways.

Offensive advertisements use various means of provocation to stimulate the consumer. However, this is only successful if the advertising strategy is innovative enough to catch the attention of the consumer. Characteristics of provocation include; originality, a taboo topic and ambiguity. Ambiguity is determined by a lack of clarity of the stimulus. A provocative message can provoke several interpretations which are different from person to person. According to Rian Swart,  Creative Faculty Head, at the AAA School of Advertising in Cape Town, some advertisements are metaphorical, so people do not interpret them in the same way. ‘Both elements have to be differentiated: the message and he meaning. The message is external but the meaning is internal and so it varies from person to person,’ says Swart. When advertisers use visual metaphors as a message, their intended meaning can be interpreted differently.

This is especially true if the advertisement is about a taboo like sex, religion or race that can generate adverse reactions. The advertisement from Feed a Child uses wealth associated with race to produce meaning. Even though the goal of the advert was not to insult South Africans, many were offended due to the overt connotations of the advert. The use of  ‘shock-tactics’ can be successful in eliciting emotional responses. But it is only effective if the responses are thought-provoking and not offensive to the viewer.

Why use a controversial strategy?

An advertising agency is first a company. It wants to make money. It has a commercial purpose. Darren Mckay, owner of Greenhouse, an advertising agency in Cape Town, shares his views on the issue:

“We care as much about values as victory, as much about purpose as profit and as much about being useful as being successful. ‘Good ethical values are important in business, money and competition.” explains Mckay.

Controversial advertisements are a clever way of promoting a brand or conveying a message when done with a purpose. Let us take the example of Benetton, a global fashion brand based in Italy. According to McKay, Benetton’s first advertisements were controversial but fashionable: a black woman breastfeeding a white baby. It represented a vital exchange. It was about communion between two beings. This strong image was intended to disrupt the old racist ideas by creating and producing values that people wanted to adopt. Benetton’s advertisements became unsuccessful when they began to shock the audience for the sake of shocking the audience. Its campaigns became disturbing because they were neither informative nor advertorial. According to Swart, agencies sometimes get it wrong because they want to be noticed. For Swart, having an offensive strategy is tantamount to not having a strategy at all. ‘Adverts have to be noticed in an appropriate way and in the right context,’ he says. McKay agrees: ‘People want to see unexpected advertisements and want to be shocked in a pleasant way. Be clever, be responsible, be controversial.

If people do not feel good about an advert, nothing happens. Moreover, people buy products from people they like. McKay claims that the biggest challenge for brands is to build an image and a trustworthy relationship with the consumer.

McKay, Swart and Mda agree that advertising agencies must be responsible. It is up to the agencies to decide how big of a risk they are willing to take. It is a high-risk decision because their reputation can be destroyed. ‘It is not mathematical. It is intuitive. They have to move with the times. Communication is not a science. They have to have emotional intelligence as well. An advertiser has to be the Shakespeare of our time. They have to understand the message and the meaning and play with them to attract the attention of people,’ says Swart.

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