"Good advertising must polarize"
Nonprofit organizations are advised to jump over the shadow of political correctness
Nonprofit organizations are recommended to jump over the shadow of political correctnessBy Christian Rintelen* Donation marketing and advertising for idealistic causes is booming in the run-up to Christmas. But advertising by non-profit organizations is often hardly noticed because it is not sufficiently provocative. After all, effective advertising and political correctness are opposites and difficult to reconcile.
A blonde lady stands on an air shaft and tries desperately to keep her skirt, blown up by the upward blowing air, in check. An elderly gentleman with a tangled white hairstyle sticks his tongue out at the photographer with a mischievous look. An airplane crashes into a skyscraper; next to it is a second one, black smoke billowing from its top floors.
The images described don't even have to be pictured for everyone to recognize them: Marilyn Monroe on the subway shaft, the famous photo of Albert Einstein, or the images of September 11, 2001 are stored in memory. So apparently there is something like a collective memory for images that are so strong, so iconic, that they are seen without being shown - it is enough to briefly describe the content of the image to bring the image before everyone's inner eye. I could probably cite ten more such images, and at each one everyone would nod in recognition.
I am equally sure that I cannot describe a single advertisement that everyone knows. Which is somewhat astonishing. After all, advertising produces images like probably no other industry and spends a lot of money trying to store them in the viewer's consciousness and trigger something. Of course, I could describe the Marlboro ad and everyone would know what I'm talking about. However, they would not remember a single, defined image. But rather a staged world.
So why is it that certain images become icons and others do not? There are plenty of reasons for this. One major reason is likely to be: Advertising does try to create icons. But they are not absorbed into the collective memory, because images in advertising are not l'art pour l'art - images fulfill a function in advertising. Advertising is never an end in itself (even if it sometimes gives that impression). Advertising always wants to achieve something. That is in the nature of things. For advertising to achieve its goals, it needs a message. For example: "Don't buy Triumph underwear, because with every Triumph brassiere you support a military dictatorship!"
Our culture renounces confrontation
But how is this message to be translated into an image? After all, the connection between brassieres and the military regime is not obvious. So how do you attract attention? With images that make you look away. With images that hurt. That's exactly the point. Advertising doesn't just have to be eye-catching. It also has to polarize if it wants to be not just right, but really good.
Now, at the latest, it becomes clear why there is so little really good advertising in Switzerland; so little advertising that sticks: Our entire culture, not just the political one, is geared toward consensus, not polarization. Polarization means creating opponents, not just friends. To polarize, you have to violate rules, cross boundaries, break taboos.
Just as car manufacturer Fiat did about 15 years ago with an advertising campaign for the Panda. The advertising agency proposed a campaign for Germany under the slogan "Fiat Panda - the great car" that ironized rather than idealized the angular minimalist car. In all market research, this campaign came out on top in terms of rejection: hardly anyone could relate to the campaign, and only a very few thought it was great. There were almost no undecideds. Other Panda campaigns did much better in the same test, achieving approval ratings of around 50 percent with 25 percent undecided.
Fortunately, the marketing director at the time from
Fiat Germany a courageous person. He said to himself: better a campaign that 10 percent applaud than one that 75 percent don't think is bad. He decided on the polarizing campaign, which subsequently became one of the most successful in German advertising history. And not just in terms of Art Directors Club awards.
Does standing out also justify all means?
So back to our advertiser, who is to develop a campaign for, or rather against, Triumph corsetry. He is looking for strong images with which he can dramatize the message. So maybe he's thinking of photoshopping a brassiere onto the military dictator and depicting him. Would certainly be an eye-catcher - but probably somewhat detract from the seriousness of the message.
He might go on to consider visualizing the military regime as drops of blood on a pristine white brassiere - but discards the idea because the red dots on the bra look like an innocuous Dalmatian design in red instead of black. Not dramatic enough. He therefore perhaps considers showing one of the victims of the military dictatorship and making the reference to Triumph in the text - but remembers in time that Benetton took this ploy to excess. And also that Benetton was not particularly successful commercially with pictures of blood-soaked T-shirts from Bosnia or of AIDS victims.
At some point, the impressively simple idea and chain of association comes up: military dictatorship equals barbed wire; ergo, bras that are created in a military dictatorship are to be equated with barbed wire. So a bra made of barbed wire. A strong image. But: a barbed wire bra on a red Triumph velvet pillow doesn't hurt, looks more like an object by Meret Oppenheim. For the barbed wire bra to hurt, it has to be worn. Not by a Burmese woman, but by a Swiss woman. And it has to be worn the way a Swiss woman normally wears bras: on her bare skin.
That the outcry of indignation did not come from Burma or from Triumph, nor from the Swiss public, but from (feminist) sides of the nonprofit organizations: This, however, should give pause for thought. For - this is what an advertiser means who has nothing, but nothing at all, to do with the blatantly offensive ad: Effective advertising and political correctness are opposites and difficult to reconcile.
Which of course leads me to the question: RightCan I depict a bare bosom if I want to advertise against bras from Burma? I may. Because there is an obvious and causal connection between the bared bosom and the message "Don't buy Triumph underwear, because with every Triumph brassiere you support a military dictatorship!". Am I allowed to show a dead Aids patient, am I allowed to show a blood-smeared
Picture T-shirt with bullet holes if I want to sell Benetton sweaters? I must not. Because the connection is firstly constructed, secondly impious and thirdly cynical.
Advertising is the art of well-dosed provocation
But why didn't the anti-racism, equality and other advocates cry out just as loudly at the Benetton ad as they did at the stone of contention discussed here? In-depth reflection on this brings to light a heretical thought: could it be that there is a difference between commercial and - let's say - idealistic advertising? Surely not.
There may be higher and lower motives for advertising. There may be ethically and morally more or less valuable products or concerns. But all are equal before the Lord - before the newspaper reader and before the radio listener. The rules of advertising apply to all. No matter whether the advertisement is financed from a bulging marketing coffers or from sparsely flowing donations. On the contrary, the less money there is, the more effective the advertising must be. A nonprofit organization that has almost no money has to work twice as hard.
Every advertising campaign has to be effective. It must cause a stir. And it has to be prepared to cause outrage among equality, anti-racism and other committees: Doing right by everyone is an art that no one can master.
If you create an ad that is approved in unison, all the alarm sirens should go off. The ad may be right. But certainly not really good. But therein lies the difference. Good advertising is the art of provocation. The question is: Can you provoke without discriminating? My experience tells me: you can't, or you can only do it to a very limited extent and less and less. Nonprofit organizations have to live with that. And with this insight, they should advertise, polarize and provoke in the future.
*Christian Rintelen is a concept developer and copywriter in Zurich. He formulated his thoughts at a meeting of nonprofit organizations on stimulus images in advertising.
A blonde lady stands on an air shaft and tries desperately to keep her skirt, blown up by the upward blowing air, in check. An elderly gentleman with a tangled white hairstyle sticks his tongue out at the photographer with a mischievous look. An airplane crashes into a skyscraper; next to it is a second one, black smoke billowing from its top floors.
The images described don't even have to be pictured for everyone to recognize them: Marilyn Monroe on the subway shaft, the famous photo of Albert Einstein, or the images of September 11, 2001 are stored in memory. So apparently there is something like a collective memory for images that are so strong, so iconic, that they are seen without being shown - it is enough to briefly describe the content of the image to bring the image before everyone's inner eye. I could probably cite ten more such images, and at each one everyone would nod in recognition.
I am equally sure that I cannot describe a single advertisement that everyone knows. Which is somewhat astonishing. After all, advertising produces images like probably no other industry and spends a lot of money trying to store them in the viewer's consciousness and trigger something. Of course, I could describe the Marlboro ad and everyone would know what I'm talking about. However, they would not remember a single, defined image. But rather a staged world.
So why is it that certain images become icons and others do not? There are plenty of reasons for this. One major reason is likely to be: Advertising does try to create icons. But they are not absorbed into the collective memory, because images in advertising are not l'art pour l'art - images fulfill a function in advertising. Advertising is never an end in itself (even if it sometimes gives that impression). Advertising always wants to achieve something. That is in the nature of things. For advertising to achieve its goals, it needs a message. For example: "Don't buy Triumph underwear, because with every Triumph brassiere you support a military dictatorship!"
Our culture renounces confrontation
But how is this message to be translated into an image? After all, the connection between brassieres and the military regime is not obvious. So how do you attract attention? With images that make you look away. With images that hurt. That's exactly the point. Advertising doesn't just have to be eye-catching. It also has to polarize if it wants to be not just right, but really good.
Now, at the latest, it becomes clear why there is so little really good advertising in Switzerland; so little advertising that sticks: Our entire culture, not just the political one, is geared toward consensus, not polarization. Polarization means creating opponents, not just friends. To polarize, you have to violate rules, cross boundaries, break taboos.
Just as car manufacturer Fiat did about 15 years ago with an advertising campaign for the Panda. The advertising agency proposed a campaign for Germany under the slogan "Fiat Panda - the great car" that ironized rather than idealized the angular minimalist car. In all market research, this campaign came out on top in terms of rejection: hardly anyone could relate to the campaign, and only a very few thought it was great. There were almost no undecideds. Other Panda campaigns did much better in the same test, achieving approval ratings of around 50 percent with 25 percent undecided.
Fortunately, the marketing director at the time from
Fiat Germany a courageous person. He said to himself: better a campaign that 10 percent applaud than one that 75 percent don't think is bad. He decided on the polarizing campaign, which subsequently became one of the most successful in German advertising history. And not just in terms of Art Directors Club awards.
Does standing out also justify all means?
So back to our advertiser, who is to develop a campaign for, or rather against, Triumph corsetry. He is looking for strong images with which he can dramatize the message. So maybe he's thinking of photoshopping a brassiere onto the military dictator and depicting him. Would certainly be an eye-catcher - but probably somewhat detract from the seriousness of the message.
He might go on to consider visualizing the military regime as drops of blood on a pristine white brassiere - but discards the idea because the red dots on the bra look like an innocuous Dalmatian design in red instead of black. Not dramatic enough. He therefore perhaps considers showing one of the victims of the military dictatorship and making the reference to Triumph in the text - but remembers in time that Benetton took this ploy to excess. And also that Benetton was not particularly successful commercially with pictures of blood-soaked T-shirts from Bosnia or of AIDS victims.
At some point, the impressively simple idea and chain of association comes up: military dictatorship equals barbed wire; ergo, bras that are created in a military dictatorship are to be equated with barbed wire. So a bra made of barbed wire. A strong image. But: a barbed wire bra on a red Triumph velvet pillow doesn't hurt, looks more like an object by Meret Oppenheim. For the barbed wire bra to hurt, it has to be worn. Not by a Burmese woman, but by a Swiss woman. And it has to be worn the way a Swiss woman normally wears bras: on her bare skin.
That the outcry of indignation did not come from Burma or from Triumph, nor from the Swiss public, but from (feminist) sides of the nonprofit organizations: This, however, should give pause for thought. For - this is what an advertiser means who has nothing, but nothing at all, to do with the blatantly offensive ad: Effective advertising and political correctness are opposites and difficult to reconcile.
Which of course leads me to the question: RightCan I depict a bare bosom if I want to advertise against bras from Burma? I may. Because there is an obvious and causal connection between the bared bosom and the message "Don't buy Triumph underwear, because with every Triumph brassiere you support a military dictatorship!". Am I allowed to show a dead Aids patient, am I allowed to show a blood-smeared
Picture T-shirt with bullet holes if I want to sell Benetton sweaters? I must not. Because the connection is firstly constructed, secondly impious and thirdly cynical.
Advertising is the art of well-dosed provocation
But why didn't the anti-racism, equality and other advocates cry out just as loudly at the Benetton ad as they did at the stone of contention discussed here? In-depth reflection on this brings to light a heretical thought: could it be that there is a difference between commercial and - let's say - idealistic advertising? Surely not.
There may be higher and lower motives for advertising. There may be ethically and morally more or less valuable products or concerns. But all are equal before the Lord - before the newspaper reader and before the radio listener. The rules of advertising apply to all. No matter whether the advertisement is financed from a bulging marketing coffers or from sparsely flowing donations. On the contrary, the less money there is, the more effective the advertising must be. A nonprofit organization that has almost no money has to work twice as hard.
Every advertising campaign has to be effective. It must cause a stir. And it has to be prepared to cause outrage among equality, anti-racism and other committees: Doing right by everyone is an art that no one can master.
If you create an ad that is approved in unison, all the alarm sirens should go off. The ad may be right. But certainly not really good. But therein lies the difference. Good advertising is the art of provocation. The question is: Can you provoke without discriminating? My experience tells me: you can't, or you can only do it to a very limited extent and less and less. Nonprofit organizations have to live with that. And with this insight, they should advertise, polarize and provoke in the future.
*Christian Rintelen is a concept developer and copywriter in Zurich. He formulated his thoughts at a meeting of nonprofit organizations on stimulus images in advertising.
