As part of web development projects we usually advise clients to look seriously at running a parallel offline media campaign too, to reinforce the brand and help with traffic; Offline media isn't the powerhouse it once was but it is still very important for reaching your target audience and directing them to your online collateral. While I'm sat in front of a blank InDesign template pondering new hooks for a client, a million ideas run through my head, most of them bad, some obscure but all aimed squarely at getting people talking about the brand. This led me into thinking about the thin line between good and bad publicity and whether it really matters anyway.
We're all familiar with the "Ratners effect" - ie: you can get away with a lot in terms of negative press but never rubbish your own products. Ever! But what about the latest one? For those of you who haven't yet seen the video, you can watch it here but essentially it contains the CEO of GoDaddy hosting services, Bob Parsons shooting an elephant. His spin on the video (which he posted on his own blog) is that 'problem' bull elephants in Zimbabwe ruin crops, SO.. he shoots elephant, crops are saved and villagers eat. That's all well and good you might think, but the whole thing smacks of justification, arrogance and short-sightedness, as though someone somewhere in the PR team has said "if we don't put this out there ourselves, it will come out anyway and you'll look even worse". That said, far be it from me to tell Parsons how to court controversy and move the game forward with riske adverts, the man's a master.
It's not in the same league as shooting elephants but this week while I was photographing for a client (large international car club) I came across an issue which we managed to turn on its head. We produced a clothing catalogue and photography for a them for which they struggled to find a model, so I stepped in.
The only issue was that some of the clothes I had been sent were a certain size and the model I had at my disposal, erm, was a different one. Still we did the shoot and prepared the catalogue accordingly. Post design, after much deliberation and to-ing and fro-ing from the club's board about whether to publish it, in the end the man in charge decided to take a punt and run with the images. The result? Well most of the Car Club's members are men and there are about eight thousand of them world-wide. Such has been the impact of the catalogue that there's now a thread in the club's user forum online dedicated to it. I'd say that was a result.
Whichever way you look at it, our accidental approach to getting products seen has worked a treat. I'll let you know the impact it has on sales and whether or not they adopt the new policy permanently!
And so I concluded that yes potentially risky publicity can work. I've accessed more information about GoDaddy this week than at any time in the past and I'm sure I'm not alone. Whether I agree or not with what he did is immaterial; his name and the traffic associated with it will have gone through the roof. The moral is BE CAREFUL. If you're thinking about strategies, stick with the tried and tested unless you can afford to take the potential hit. Here's a few pages from the catalogue in the mean time..
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