Embracing the Absurd: The Dangers of Marketing Desperation
The Golden Age
On your television, your box of cereal, while streaming music, even on your commute: we are living in a world surrounded by media advertising. Yet, gone are the days in which companies can reliably reach their targeted consumers with a simple advertisement; with the exponential growth of social media marketing. Firms must now compete with countless others for viewers’ attention; carefully crafting advertisements to meet their customers’ exact needs. In such a tempest of corporate messaging, some companies are resorting to stranger and more outlandish tactics to break through the noise. Yet, to truly understand why companies are doing this, it is important to understand the origins of this marketing tactic in the Golden Age of Advertisement.
While conventional content advertising has existed in some form since the later nineteenth century, it was not until the 1950s that the practice took its stride. A perfect storm of post-war economic recovery, the mass production of consumer televisions—and rapidly growing families—ushered in a renewed age of consumerism. Marketers rejoiced as they were able to reach an ever-growing number of people who had a bottomless appetite for consumer goods. Televisions enabled companies to design creative multi-channel marketing campaigns, meaning that consumers could now receive the same company messaging in-store and at home. In light of this, companies began to think outside of the box, and implemented creative advertising campaigns that followed people wherever they went. In this ‘Brave New World,’ consumers were confronted with advertisements that were more complex than simply listing product benefits, and they loved it.
Potentially the most successful advertisement of the Era was Esso’s ‘Put a Tiger in Your Tank’ campaign. Esso promoted their tiger campaign in a wide variety of mediums: from television ads to tiger tails that attached to your car. By personifying the power of their gasoline into a tiger character, Esso was able to transform a simple household commodity into a desired consumer brand.
Exhibit 1: Esso advertisement from 1950s - pulled from Esso.ca
The effects of Esso’s ad campaign could be seen immediately. Sales skyrocketed, millions of tiger tales were sold in the Unites States alone, and 1964 was declared the ‘Year of the Tiger’ by Time Magazine in honour of Esso. Yet today, a simple advertisement such as this would be highly unlikely to garner such an enthusiastic response. Company mascots are a dime a dozen, and highly unlikely to turn heads like they used to. Thus, some companies have decided to step outside of the box with their advertisements.
Shock and Awe
For years, companies were able to effectively rely on their advertising campaigns to bring in new customers—before the tsunami of advertisements that emerged with social media. Now, it is much more difficult for companies to measure the success of their marketing ideas, with the effectiveness of classic advertising being notoriously difficult to predict. One study of Facebook advertising showed that only 53 per cent of ad campaigns resulted in a statistically significant increase in sales. Now, like a spoilt child craving love and affection, some companies are releasing wilder and wilder promotion campaigns to generate the one thing they crave most: buzz.
Buzz is a form of marketing currency representing how widespread customer word-of-mouth is; if advertisements won’t effectively promote a company, then they turn to consumers to do it for them. Key to this definition of buzz is that it does not matter if the talk is positive or negative: people just need to be talking.
To stand out amongst a crowd of other companies with similar product offerings, some firms are choosing to throw out everything they know about content advertising. Carefully constructed advertisements engineered to target certain segments are replaced in favour of random, strange, and outright disturbing advertisements designed to generate buzz—be it positive or not.
One recent example of this trend is with the fast-food giant: Burger King. In the past few months, Burger King has released several different marketing oddities designed to spark consumer interest and conversation. First, in May, the German wing of the fast-food chain released the Pregnancy Whopper for Mothers’ Day. The advertisement highlighted their limited-edition burger combos including vanilla ice cream and olives, or whipped cream and pickles.
Exhibit 2: Burger King advertisement - Pulled from Adweek.com
Before consumers could have time to properly process the strange advertisement, Burger King decided to shock consumers again—this time in ‘celebration’ of Pride Month. For the month of June, Burger King Austria released the Pride Whopper: a burger with either two top buns or two bottom buns. Naturally, this sparked a firestorm of conversation. The rapid succession of these two advertisements had polarized people, with some loving them and others hating them. However they achieved Burger King’s ultimate goal of generating buzz.
While Burger King may have generated some level of outrage with the aforementioned advertising campaigns, they ultimately were able to emerge generally unscathed. They achieved their goal of striking conversation without damaging their core image. Yet, some brands have taken absurd advertising a step further, and designed their entire brand around the weird and strange.
Off the Deep End
While attention is something that most brands desire, few are willing to change their entire brand image to receive it. However, some brands have gone all in with the absurd and centred their entire brand image around it. Just as Icarus flew too close to the sun with his pride, some companies leaned on absurdism too much, and thus changed customers’ perceptions of them forever. They have been trapped in a vicious cycle of customers being outraged at their product offerings, but then expecting them to continue releasing outlandish material.
This can be seen perhaps most commonly in the fashion industry, with brands such as Balenciaga, or Vetements. Originally founded as a luxury fashion house in the mid 20th century, by the late 2000s Balenciaga had become a lackluster brand. To revitalize itself, Balenciaga hired a new creative director, who tapped into the strategy of buzz marketing. While sticking to generally basic clothing heavily inspired by streetwear, the brand decided to send its models down the runway in six-inch platform crocs. This absurd promotion decision instantly sparked conversation, with some intrigued, and others mortified.
While generating a considerable amount of outrage, Balenciaga’s decision to market themselves using wildly ridiculous shoes was a major success. In 2018, when the runway show occurred, Balenciaga’s sales jumped by 60%, becoming the world’s fasted growing luxury fashion brand. Clearly inspired by the success of this initial marketing decision, Balenciaga embraced absurdity as a core aspect of its product promotions. At each runway show, most of the lineup is tame—but the company will include one or two ridiculous-looking items designed to spark outrage. From totes that mimic Ikea bags, a collaboration with Teva, or a runway show with models in full gimp suits, Balenciaga has become a master of generating buzz.
Yet, while Balenciaga has been able to generate high levels of consumer awareness, one must also note the irreversible damage marketing absurdism has had on their brand image. Initially founded as a fashion house that designed for Spanish royalty, Balenciaga’s brand image has nearly permanently been altered to reflect their recent choices. After a recent runway show, one reviewer noted that, “everything ugly, or aesthetically displeasing, seemed to reflect the Balenciaga aesthetic.”
This is the gamble of straying too far from the marketing norms. While certainly effective at generating buzz, one must not rely on outrageous techniques too frequently—lest consumers grow accustomed to them. To truly create shock and awe in consumers, a marketing campaign must be completely out of the norm. If absurdity becomes the norm, than a company has trapped itself in a vicious cycle wherein consumers expect them to act increasingly deranged to continue sparking interest. This begs the question: why? Like most things in business, the decision of whether to stick with marketing norms, or to embrace the absurd is a question of risk and reward, and what the company truly values.
Joining the Circus
The decision to risk throwing away the wellbeing of a brand often comes down to a strategic fallacy known as short-termism. If the past two decades have shown companies anything, it is that their fortunes can turn on a dime. From two colossal recessions (with a third potentially on the way), a global pandemic, and multiple geopolitical crises, companies have had to deal with an ever-growing list of challenges—that not all have survived. With the future offering no certainty, some companies have opted to focus solely on the present.
If all we care about is the present, then we are willing to take much bigger risks, and act far outside of normal means to maximize immediate results. From hence, the logic of short-termism is born. In marketing, short-termism results in exclusively focusing efforts on attracting new customers, without paying any attention to retaining them. This is where absurdism comes into play, with companies acting out to create buzz, and thus attract new customers. Consider these companies akin to a class clown; always seeking attention by disrupting class. But what the class clown fails to consider is that their behaviour hurts them in the long run, with most people tending to avoid their presence.
Like the class clown, companies who engage in absurd tactics out of marketing desperation may see their long-term brand equity suffer as a result. Consumers can only be entertained by silly marketing techniques for so long before they get bored. When this happens, the brand may find itself in a lose-lose situation. Consumers are sick and tired of the same old oddities—yet they have also lost their brand legitimacy to present serious offerings.
Exhibit 4: Balenciaga Full Destroyed Paris Sneaker - Pulled from mothership.sg
One brand starting to feel the pain from their extended marketing absurdism is none other than Balenciaga. While outrage is often expected after a runway show, Balenciaga’s latest gaffe (tattered sneakers selling for an eye-popping $1,850 USD) broke through the western fashion world into the mainstream. Outrage against Balenciaga was perhaps strongest in China, which represents one of their key customer bases.
A Word of Warning
It is reasonable to understand that sometimes brands face dire economic situations and need to attract new customers fast. But an absurd marketing trick can only be that: a Hail Mary trick shot. To achieve long-term brand growth, marketers need to truly understand who their consumers are, and what they need. For example, rather than releasing random ads that have nothing to do with their food, Burger King should consider what needs they fulfil, and tailor their messaging towards this. In the long run, this is the only way for brands to attract, and retain consumers. Adopting an old adage, we see that if you give a man an intriguing product, he may give you some money. But if you give a man a solution, then he will give you his loyalty.
This doesn’t necessarily mean removing all creative elements from an advertisement. Esso’s “Put a Tiger in Your Tank” advertisement worked so well because it conveyed a solution in a creative way. Rather than simply saying that their gas made your car strong, they personified the solution as a tiger. On the other hand, Burger King’s pregnancy whopper—while very creative—did not in any way relate to a need that it fulfilled.
Time will tell only tell if brands such as Balenciaga have finally seen their fortunes run out. My inclination is that if not now, then it soon will. Ultimately humans are proud beings and may not enjoy having companies base their entire marketing strategy around acting ridiculous to provoke us into giving them attention. Brands are testing the water of whether they can profitably ignore the needs of consumers in their marketing strategy. If this were a success, then we could soon see a wider array of brands partake in outlandish and sensational advertising, a sea of grown-up class clowns at the helm of the advertising department. For the sake of consumer culture, this strategy must fail.