ADVERTISING AND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

What is Political Correctness?

Rarely would a day pass without the vast majority of the population hearing this term at least once. But what does it mean? Most believe they know, but it tends to be a subjective view.  

Political Correctness (PC) is best defined by

“Agreeing with the idea that people should be careful not to use language or behave in a way that offends a particular group of people”. More and more, this “particular group of people” has come to mean those who had traditionally been marginalised and suffered inequality.

Most fair minded people would agree with this, as they would with:

“I do not agree with what you have to say but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” (For the trivia buffs it wasn’t coined by Voltaire, but his biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall). Not the fact they would literally die for the right to call someone an arsehole, but the principal of freedom of speech.

Maybe not unique, but highly unusual to have two diametrically opposed philosophies with the vast majority of fair minded people agreeing with both. “Fair minded” is a weasel term in that it implies anyone who is strongly aligned with either of these opposite philosophies is not fair minded.

PC is difficult to write about without being seen to “take sides”, even if the side is the middle. (yep, an oxymoron, but this whole debate is riddled with them). 

What’s Advertising Got to Do with It?

There are two ways advertising gets caught up in this debate:

• The specific ad or piece of communication is deemed offensive. The recent Twitter ad for KFC is a good example.
• The programme, publication or whatever the content in which the ad appears. The issue here is that although the advertising may be seen to pass the PC test, the content in which it appears does not. So the advertising is “funding” the offending material.

During my 30 years in this business I have seen advertising blamed for just about every blight on society. And each time I think “if only advertising was that powerful and influential”.

Advertising doesn’t start trends. Our role is to be aware of emerging trends and to latch onto and leverage them for commercial benefit. And this is done in conjunction with the basic emotions that drive us all, the ones Shakespeare wrote about. For the people who say “it is all different today”, it is insightful to note that although Shakespeare wrote in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, his works are still taught universally today. (Some say it is mainly to torture ill-disciplined young minds)

 Yes, we do community service “announcements”, but advertising is a commercial game.  Anyone who thinks differently should work for a “not for profit” organization. Nothing wrong with this. But companies “invest” in advertising and like all investments, expect a return.

So the first claim about the ad (KFC) itself being offensive and a threat is nonsense. I read a comment posted about the KFC ad claiming it had “put women’s rights back 50 years in this country”. From what I recall it was the girl grabbing the guy’s crotch, not the other way around. Taken literally the girl was in charge and she was treating the guy as “a sex object”.

I am not trivializing the issue of violence against women. I heard a statistic the other day that shocked me to the core. One woman is killed by their partner every 2 weeks in NSW. How many more are not only physically injured, but suffer mental trauma? If that number of people were killed by sharks each year in NSW, there would a huge public outcry resulting in a frenzy of activity and tens of millions of dollars spent. I consider myself well-read and abreast of news- political, social and business. But I had no idea the numbers were so high and the problem so large.

But to blame advertising in the manner the lady who claimed the KFC ad did, does the cause more harm than good. People switch off when fanatics preach.

In 1994, my agency created the United Nations International Year of the Family campaign. The TVC and related material passed a rigorous PC test, but the programmes in which the TVC was to appear came in for some stringent censorship. One in particular was “The Lion King”. Village Roadshow offered us many millions of dollars of free advertising by running the ad immediately prior to the movie commencing in theatres all around Australia. (Not in the usual clutch of ads well prior to the movie).

The Lion King was deemed highly inappropriate for an ad about the importance of families:

• The lionesses were subservient to the lions.
• Scar, the evil lion, was played by Jeremy Irons whose character spoke with a camped up lisp. Gay = Evil.
• Whoopi Goldberg played the role of the lead hyena, Shenzi. African Americans were at the bottom of the socio-economic totem pole, reinforcing stereotypes.

The above reasons were given to me by the private secretary of one of the best known, pragmatic and most powerful cabinet ministers of the Hawke and then Keating governments.  

So PC is not a recent phenomenon and what is and what is not offensive is highly subjective. The Lion King went on to become one of Disney’s best known and loved movies that families around the world watched. But according to the best and brightest in Canberra in 1994, it should have been banned from all theatres in Australia and never seen the light of day – censorship at its worst. 

Advertising Levering Base Emotions and PC Clash Head On.

In the same way that advertising doesn’t create new trends, neither does it change or influence the base emotions that drive us all. But effective advertising links the product or service to these base needs.

Sex sells.

Whilst many may scoff at this statement, there is no denying it is true. People want to look the best they can to be attractive to the opposite sex (or same sex) – as a basic human need is to find a mate.  (Propagation of the species)

These base “needs” are played upon in advertising for many products and services.  

• Love and belonging
• Self- esteem/ego
• Achievement

Are all used in effective advertising and all can raise the ire of the PC police.

We have bodies such as the Advertising Standards Bureau (ASB) and CAD who pass judgement on the appropriateness, or otherwise, of advertising. Many may be surprised to know that it takes only 1 complaint for the ASB to launch an investigation. (see https://adstandards.com.au).

But it is Also Good Business to be Good.

Over the past forty or fifty years, business has noted that being seen to be socially responsible is good for their image. This has progressed from being a “clever tactical initiative” back in the 60s and 70s to a mandatory today. (Particularly in the age of social media) There is an expectation within 1st world communities that the private sector has social responsibilities – it cannot all be left to government.

An article in the Australian not that long ago ran the headline “Workplace diversity is just a logo away”. Companies are paying for the right to use the official workplace diversity logo. They did not have to introduce any operational procedures or policies to ensure diversity and they were not “audited” in any way. It was purely an exercise in merchandising.

So now advertisers must walk a fine line between being seen (which is different to actually doing something) to be a progressive and socially responsible organisation and using advertising and promotional executions that trigger base emotions, which can be politically incorrect.

The Consumer will be the Ultimate Judge

No advertiser is going to deliberately offend their customers. Brands spend huge amounts of money and time to generate good will and trust.

Lobby/vested interest groups have always been well organized. Far more so than the “silent majority”. Prior to social media, if an advertiser received a hundred letters of complaint, they would panic, often making a knee jerk reaction to pull or radically change the offending communication.

Way back in 1987, a large multinational client and national advertiser received over a hundred letters complaining they were advertising in Penthouse magazine and would boycott their products unless they stopped using this “offensive magazine”. Given the task of responding to the complaints, my boss at the time noticed a similarity between all of the letters – pretty much the same opening, body and close.

He tracked the writers down to a hard core religious group in Queensland, a “flock” ministered to by a Baptist minister from one of the Southern States in the US.  In his monthly newsletter he targeted the client and provided his followers with the outline of the letter they should write. We managed to convince the client the letters were not from a wide cross section of the community.

Interestingly, some 6 months after the blow up, there was a news report that the minster in question was jailed for fiddling with young children and tax avoidance.

So a tax avoiding, pedophile almost forced a change in the media strategy of large national advertiser.

Today we have social media and well organized minorities can appear to be far larger than they really are. And advertisers react to their social media campaigns.

The advertising industry is not immune to this propaganda tactic. It seems that any ad which dares to step outside of the vanilla, draws fire from people in the industry through social media. Twitter being a favourite. Social media brings very strong peer pressure into the issue.

The poor marketing manager is bombarded with well-organised social media campaigns from both within the advertising industry and the community at large, telling them their communications are offensive. The vast majority are risk adverse and will cave into these pressures.

Below is a TVC from one of the all- time great Australian creative agencies, The Campaign Palace

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdrOWhxA46Q

Not only did it win a swag of awards, it was hugely successful. Complaints? Bugger all. Sales? Through the roof. The term “Sick ‘em Rex” whilst not entirely new, become part of the lexicon for several years. (Similar to ‘Not happy Jan” from the Yellow Pages TVC).

I think if this ad ran today there would be two certain consequences:

• A concerted social media campaign, claiming it was demeaning to women, put women’s rights back 50 years, was responsible for a rise in sexual assaults etc., etc.
• Become a YouTube sensation for a period of time. (On YouTube now, but it is lost in in the library of thousands of great TVCs from the past).

The ultimate judges of this ad should have been and were the target market and they loved it, buying Ants Pants by the truckload.

It was a “tongue in cheek”, light hearted, fun ad. It was not meant to offend, but to add a risqué image to what had been a pedestrian brand of underwear.

No wonder we end up with ads such “It’s a Mitsy”. Clients are too scared to ask for and support genuine ideas.  Great ideas push the envelope and step outside of the norm. But if a client is going to be swayed by concerted social media campaigns and conflict and criticism from within their organistaion (have to fight both internally and externally) then they won’t ever be caught up in any type of controversy, nor will they ever benefit from big ideas for the brands and products for which they are responsible.  Great ideas will always provoke debate, but ultimately lead to great results. And isn’t that what advertising is supposed to help achieve?

Vanilla – works for ice cream and brulee, but not for advertising.