Understanding Confrontational and Controversial Marketing
September 17th, 2007 by Michael Gray in Case StudyIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
Controversial and confrontational marketing are time tested methods for bringing traffic, attention and links to your company, product or website, however there’s more to it than just picking a fight.
The key to being successful with this approach is really having a firm understanding of your market, audience or ideal customer. Find a topic or subject that speaks directly to them. You want to find issue they are concerned about, things they are thinking about, or problems that they need solved. You then want to alienate people aren’t part of that market and probably aren’t ever going to become your customer. Want an example here’s a Clearasil commercial where a young girl deals with the embarrassment of having her mom show her baby pictures to her boyfriend
The commercial speaks to teens about coming to grips with their own individuality, sexuality, and growing into a confident adult. The commercial obviously has upset a certain sector of conservative parents.
Another example comes from Carl Jr’s. While McDonalds and Burger King go after the “family” market, Carl Jr’s goes after the single male 18-35. They produced the infamous Paris Hilton Car wash commercial last year, and followed it up with Flat Buns commercial featuring a teacher bumping, grinding and gyrating in front of her class
The ad has conservative parents and teachers worked into a tizzy.
Another example is the Dove Soap pro aging campaign, featuring mature non models in unretouched photos
The company is also trying to embrace women who don’t fit the stereotypical image of beauty or glamour and speak directly too them
Ok enough theory I’ve shown you some funny commercial and nice pictures how does this help you as an internet marketer, is it for you, and how do you put a plan into action?
Identify Your Market - first and foremost you really need to have a really good idea of who your target market and ideal consumer is. Understand what they want, or need, or desire (see nobody wants to be fat or poor). Speak to them and not at them. Be honest, truthful, and direct, don’t use the same old marketing hyperbole they’ve been getting from everyone else for years.
You Need a Villain - For everyone who is in your ideal customer there are people who aren’t, and understand you are going to piss them off to a certain degree. What are they going to do when they get pissed off, can you take the heat and weather the storm? For example will painting someone as a link communist help or hinder you in the long run? If you’re really good or clever you’ll use you’re villain guerilla warfare style to help spread your message.
Fan the Fire - There’s a fine line between astroturfing and a grass roots movement, and sometimes it’s hard to know where that line is (see Sony viral marketing ploy angers consumers). Drop as many hints as you possibly can in the “right places” in front of the right people. Make it really easy for them to spread your message. For example instead of trying to hoard all the link love for yourself, let people embed your youtube video and spread it for you.
Still too much theory for you, you want some real life examples in action, ok here you go …
Rand Fishkin - see I Used to Respect Robert Scoble’s Opinion
ShoeMoney - see DMOZ Extortion
Jason Calacanis - see SEO is Bullshit
Rae Hoffman - see Merchant Circle
Kim Krause - see I Don’t Digg Being Dugg
Tamar Weinberg - an Open Letter to Kevin Rose
There are lots and lots more out there. To what extent each of these was a planned event where all of the pieces were set in motion according to a master plan, I don’t know. I’m sure some were, and some just kind of happened overnight when someone felt really passionate about a particular issue. However unless you’ve actually dissected some of these, you really won’t have an idea how they work, and how to make them work for you. My advice smart small, don’t step up to the plate looking to hit the bottom of the 9th grand slam homerun your first time at bat. Secondly pay attention, things have the potential to go terribly wrong, know when to pull the plug and apologize.
Sphere It
September 19th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Thanks Michael. I’m generally not a confrontational person by nature so I’ve tended to shy away from this kind of marketing. I’ve certainly seen how some have done very well with it, though.
I can see how it all hinges on truly understanding your market and who you’re trying to appeal to. At first glance being controversial might seem risky because of who you might alienate, but in understand your market better you can craft your controversy to only alienate the people who were never going to be on board.
Even more you get the alienated to do a lot of your marketing.
September 19th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Great post Michael. Another approach is finding a non-related market and creating ammo (content they can link to) they can use to reinforce their arguments against their enemies.
September 21st, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Those are some brilliant ads. I love the Clearasil one. The flat buns one strikes me a incredibly stupid, but probably resonates well with the target demographic (or maybe not, since I fall into that demographic…then again, I’m a marketer, and probably not as easily swayed by advertising as others might be).
Controversial advertising can work incredibly well if done right, and you’ve given some great examples here. Like Steven said in the first comment, it works even better if you can get those you’ve alienated to do your marketing for you (which, really, is the secret to controversy marketing—you get people talking, which generates even greater interest among those you’re trying to reach with your message).
September 21st, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Wow — Confrontational Marketing 2.0. Should I make the article Confrontational or Controversial Marketing 2.0? Either way, i’ll be connecting the articles together. Let me know Mike, i’ll add it and then add a tooon to this entry. I love the content — one thing though, it’s funny that confrontational marketing works for the open source movement as well as alliance force creations (gang up on the enemy and go against a central villain aspect).
Anyways, great touch on the subject, this is likely the best controversial marketing post i’ve seen in a loong time.
October 9th, 2007 at 12:13 am
Can we suspect that knowing and focusing very well at the audience is the key here? You probably need to know the industry, too, since targetting the wrong person wont get you any good.