By Sanjeev Kotnala
Blame Eularie Saldanha in Campaign India for triggering this article. It questioned if the brands would come on board platforms dedicated to porn? In the current era of targeted marketing, reaching larger audiences, breaking taboos and being woke overall, how ironic is it for mediums with such potential to be avoided by brands for advertising? I am not getting there, but many brands have been using creative clearly and cleverly full of double meaning. Creativity is used in the quest for attention-grabbing, shocking, and otherwise culturally misfit communication.
Pornographic sites may be one of the largest visited sites, but mostly, the audience wants to remain anonymous. The article also suggests that brands avoid pornographic mediums as they believe it would/can contravene the law. However, brands are open to cleverly including titillating objectifying messages to defend them as non-objectionable and straightforward.
Yes, yes, they, in that case, are not breaking any law. However, it is still not safe and can lead to controversies and negative brand impact. On the other side, it can help build up an immediate reaction, a totally anticipated buzz and controllable earned media.
Recently the real estate platform plastered the city with hoardings where the double-meaning was the strategy for attention-seeking. And most people may today see nothing wrong with this advertising, and at least they have not broken any law. The brand, in such cases, has taken a strategic open-eyed conscious decision to use the medium in the way they have- including the predominant yellow background. However, they have cleverly missed simple thoughts along with some provocative communication. Today in 2022, the campaign is seen as Traffic Halting humour! And is also called out for Vulgarity. So clearly, some love it, and some hate it.
Zomato, in 2017, did the debated and discredited MC BC campaign. Here the descriptors were the protection. Did it make Zomato a less favoured app? The answer would be a straight NO. Were they right in doing the campaign? Don’t know- but they were within their rights to do so. It was not something that was against prevailing ASCI guidelines. Was it a case of Dirt lies in the eyes of the thinker– the audience who read the campaign differently?
Sometimes it is all about relevance and the timing of the campaign. As we evolve and more openness creeps into society, the subject matter of such campaigns may not be called out for their content, hopefully losing the shock value. The operating world is Hopefully.
Double meaning campaigns may be as old as the advertising itself. Sometimes they seem witty and humorous, and often crossing the edge, they are deemed hugely offensive. It is always a tight rope walk for the brand.
In India, we had campaigns like – LUX innerwear- Andar Ki Baath ai, Amul Macho- Toying hai, Teda hai par mera hai, Aquawhite- Roz Raat ko kartey ho, ZATAK and many more. Earlier, this was primarily restricted to Condoms, Perfumes, Deodrants and innerwear.
In the Campaign India article, Ashish Khazanchi, managing partner, Enormous Brand, speaks on porn sites as advertising media. It is also true for the double meaning campaigns. He says: “One would have to do it in a manner that is really clever and makes the audiences like the brand for its smartness. The potential for cringe remains huge, so the communication better is genuinely witty.”
Defining clearly smart and genuinely witty will always be subjective and open to debate. Every brand has to find its own coordinates for what will be permissible, legally unchallenged and ethically- culturally correct. While doing so, they should check it on the SMEAR index and be ready with an honourable escape. Zomato did it with their campaign– so did brand ManKind Pharma during Navratri– even when there was complete data-based strategic support.
The question still remains: who decides these edges and social acceptance. And is it right to throttle creativity by people hungry for media attention? The double meaning is also one of the ways of being witty and creative!