Why it's ok to polarise opinion (or what advertising can learn from The Smiths)

Is it OK to polarise opinion? 
(Or what advertising can learn from The Smiths)

Not surprisingly for someone who grew up in the 1980’s, my favourite band were and still remain The Smiths. From the moment I heard the raucous opening riff from Hatful of Hollow’s Handsome Devil I was completely hooked. There was something about the combination of Marr’s chiming tunes and Morrissey’s vulnerable melodies and introspective lyrics that really, really spoke to me. Not only did I look forward to every new release with fevered anticipation, I would say that between 1984 and 1987 I rarely listened to anything else.

However, to say The Smiths were not everyone’s cup of tea would be the understatement of 1986. While no band or musician is universally liked, even in the polarized world of 1980s pop, The Smiths seemed to provoke rather extreme reactions.

For me being a Smiths fan often felt like supporting a football team. And not just any team, at times a particularly unpopular one. Like Marmite, you either loved them or you hated them, there was no middle ground. But while nobody half liked them, they did inspire devotion in those who did. And like most Smith’s fans I bought all their albums, most of their singles, posters and plenty of t-shirts too. I didn’t care that friends (and some teachers) in school gave me grief for being a fan. As far as I was concerned, anyone who liked Bryan Adams, Wet Wet Wet and Def Leppard didn’t know a thing about music. I was a devotee. 

So how does this relate to advertising and communications? Are there any lessons that brands can learn here that will lead to better and more effective campaigns being developed? Well it’s simply this…A brand doesn’t have to be universally popular/ liked to be successful. How many people dislike your product isn’t half as important as how many people like or love it.

The question we need to ask; is how much passion or excitement will our next campaign engender? Will it actually create a sale or get people to change their behaviour? In today’s increasingly fractured media and the almost limitless, internet enabled options, you have to be prepared to be different, bold or controversial simply to get your audience’s attention and really, really engaging to shake them out of their apathy and disrupt their behaviour. And sometimes that means alienating as many people as you convert. 

A fascinating if rather extreme example of this, was the Protein World’s campaign in the UK from a few years ago. For many it’s a prime example of how not to bring a product onto the market. The campaign launched with an unmissable, bright yellow 48 sheet poster featuring a bikini clad model on London’s underground with the headline ‘Are you beach body ready?’

Putting our own opinions of the ad aside, what’s not in question is that within days it became a lightening-rod for offended commentators, women’s rights groups and of course quite a few of the recreationally outraged. It quickly reached such a fever pitch, including defaced posters and even death threats, that their global marketing manager – Richard Staveley - was forced to defend the campaign on national radio and television.

However, instead of offering a predictable mea culpa, he rather remarkably refused to bow to public pressure and instead doubled down on their marketing position. He argued that the question it posed has been asked a thousand times on women’s magazine covers and ladies in bikinis are no stranger to advertising.

However, the real reason behind his bravado was simple, the campaign was working [1] . And it wasn’t anything to do with the hackneyed old maxim of all publicity being good publicity, no it was working as all the best advertising does, on an emotional, subconscious level.

Though not immediately obvious, looking through the comments section from the many articles covering the story tells you why. It wasn’t the passion of the many voices condemning the campaign as sexist, crass, promoting eating disorders and or body fascist. No, it was the passion and enthusiasm of those defending it as healthy, aspirational and no worse than any retouched cosmetic’s campaign. While you might imagine most of these were trolls trying to raise heckles, it seemed that most were in fact young, body-conscious women.

 What Protein World realised early on, was that those condemning the campaign were not their target market. They were never going to buy their product. And among those who would, the message wasn’t just spreading like wildfire, it was turning many into ambassadors willing to defend the brand. Protein World were more than happy to alienate way more people than they converted, because protein supplements are not for everyone. As they saw it, if they got 10% of the supplements market, the campaign had been an unqualified success.  

But just in case you’re thinking this polarisation is just an opportunity for niche brands, think again. Just look how two of the world’s biggest companies Apple and Google (Android) have done a Blur and Oasis and polarized the tech community into two distinct tribes. Apple in particular doesn’t seem to mind, that it’s whole approach seems to be about locking out as many people as it lets in. And despite the products being almost identical, think how people identify as Coke or Pepsi drinkers, or specifically as McDonalds or Burger King customers.

While I am not suggesting that any campaign should set out to deliberately be controversial, alienate or offend, is it not better that your advertising create genuine excitement and ambassadors for a product even if it’s only amongst a few, then a general ambivalence amongst many that so many ads do? 

So how do we do this? Well simply our campaigns should look to produce greater emotional engagement. Neuroscience shows that doing this fires our memory encoding [2] . We’re all aware of how John Lewis’ deliberately emotional Christmas campaigns not only over-perform at awards, but did you know they also over-perform when it comes to producing results. Whether our clients buy it or not, there is a proven link between advertising creativity and effectiveness [3] .    

While The Smiths were admittedly never huge, the way their music encoded the memory of those who liked them created a legacy of longevity (they sold more records since they split then when they were together) and influence, with them being cited as a major inspiration on acts as like Belle & Sebastian, Radiohead, Blur, The Killers, Muse, Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand, Suede and Ryan Adams. And isn’t that something any brand would love to enjoy.  

Daniel O’Doherty

Senior Copywriter, Ican