Advertising Complaints - one man's poison...

• ‹ previous
• 698 of 925
• next ›

Like many others, I saw my first glimpse of the Barnado's Christmas TV and viral adverts last week.  Pretty hard-hitting, some would say shock, tactics employed throughout but it is a serious message after all.

I'm not surprised to learn that around 400 complaints have been received by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).  We live in a country of approaching 60 million people and unless all communications, all of the time, are so bland so as to offend no-one, marketers will always generate complaints. 

Creating that 'stir' is vital if your activities are to ever gain any cut-through in our media-saturated world.  I am willing to bet that the campaign generates far more responses, donations and offers of support than it will complaints - so does this prove the point?

When I was a jobbing marketer I had a particularly driven Director who actually formalised this kind of controversy into my objectives.  His view was that if we didn't receive at least one ASA complaint every year, we clearly weren't trying hard enough to generate the 'buzz' around the products in question.

As a diligent employee I proceeded to push as far as possible utilising the range of communications media at my disposal and 'successfully' racked up three complaints during the next two years.  The one which was upheld incorporated a realistic X-ray, complete with brown envelope and handwritten Post-it note which was distributed as a magazine and press insert. 

The one complaint it received and which was enough to have it withdrawn was from a lady who was expecting some medical results and thought these might be hers.  Why she thought her results would be inside her copy of The Sunday Times is still a mystery to me but she was unhappy none-the-less.

Incidentally, when I questioned the ASA, I was told conversationally that it was time my employer got caught for something.  Apparently this is a healthy thing for marketers and advertisers, periodically.

The upshot was one of the most successful awareness and ROI campaigns we ever managed, so one person's poison didn't seem to be everyone's in this instance.

Kevin Baughen is founder of Bottom Line Ideas, is a speaker for Cancer Research UK and a long-time advocate of blurring the lines between best practice across the charity and commercial worlds.