Shockvertising

Summary


The article is about "shockvertising", a new way of advertising which intentionally seeks to annoy, scare or otherwise make people shocked. The article also states that this form of advertising, hereafter called "shockvertising" will become more prevalent as advertising gets more and more cluttered. Finally it warns potential marketers about having to draw a fine line because if it is just plain offending then there will probably be a backlash against the company. For example, a woman sued Toyota for $10 million because she thought that she was being stalked as part of a "Terror Marketing" campaign. This campaign included e-mail and videos which upset the woman.

Connections

The article mentions the need to draw a line between what isn't offensive and what is offensive. While I agree that it has to be done, for different people, the line is at different places. That is why a company that plans on doing a "shockvertising" campaign must do careful market research in order to reach their target market. That leads me to my connection, in the textbook, it mentions niche marketing which is marketing to very specific people. Shockvertising and niche marketing both need careful market research in order to reach their target market. If they don't then the conseqences are essentially the same, the company loses money through ads that are considered either offensive enough for someone not to buy a product or service or reaching a market that is simply not interested in the product or service.

Reflections

Personally, I think that shockvertising is like a Pandora's Box. With all the ads that we see each day, we really don't pay attention to ads anymore unless they are really memorable. With shockvertising, more ads will be memorable, which leads to more market awareness of the company doing the advertising. It's inevitable that some people will be very offended and some people will be just plain pissed off, however in general if an ad is really offensive, funny or stupid then people will start talking about it, which means the marketers' jobs are done.