Being Disruptive and Being Disturbing – A Fine Line in Advertising

This week, reading the Dove articles for real beauty, has me thinking a lot about how the creative landscape and the sociopolitical environment we are in are colliding. Whether we like to admit it or not, the truth is we have become a society that is constantly on the edge of offense. The struggles Dove has faced with their real beauty campaign and the misguided advertising they have received backlash for is just one of many examples to demonstrate the fine line between being powerfully disruptive and dangerously offensive when attempting to create buzz-worthy advertising.

I can understand the boundaries that have been crossed with many very public advertising flops we have seen in the past few years. Nivea clearly crossed the line with their “White is purity” slogan, which was deemed racially offensive in their messaging (Chi, 2017). Another example of ill-conceived advertising is Benetton’s “Unhate” campaign, which used photoshop to put world leaders together in inappropriate liplocks (2017). See the photo below, which anyone at first glance would consider unacceptable without any explanation of what was happening. (Which makes one wonder how it was ever published in the first place…?)

A no brainer – right? But what about the ads that are NOT so obvious in their shortcomings? Pepsi caught a lot of heat for the commercial with Kris Jenner handing a police officer a Pepsi. Negative feedback poured in claiming that Pepsi has made light of the recent protests and reduced their complexity and seriousness down to something as trivial as “sharing a Pepsi” to overcome social inequalities (Siegal, 2017). Was this the intention, though? Obviously not. The message was to share in our humanity and come together with a common appreciation. Essentially, a creative and disruptive advertisement that, perhaps, waddled too far over the line. They’re not the only ones who have slipped with good intentions (that were far less obvious than the above “unhate” images are). There are plenty others who have unnerved our society for some reason or another within the past few years (see Dua, 2017).

So, how far is too far? And at what point does creativity avoid disruptions for the sake of not “disrupting” anyone? Are we as a society becoming more sensitive? Or are we pushing the boundaries too far in our advertising?

References

Chi, L. (2017). From Pepsi to Nivea: Some of the worst advertising fails. BBS News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39511906

Dua, T. (2017). The 10 worst ads of 2017. Business Insider. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/worst-ads-of-the-year-2017-12

Siegal, J. (2017, April 5). Watch the Pepsi commercial that have the entire internet going crazy. BGR. Retrieved from http://bgr.com/2017/04/05/pepsi-ad-kendall-jenner-tone-deaf-commercial/