Shock Tactics in Advertising -- Russian Real Estate

Thanks to my fellow Canadian marketer, Jane, for pointing this one out in Dear Jane Sample.

To follow up on my previous post on shock tactics, here is an example of shock tactics being used outside of the realm of the public awareness.

Domu.ru (translated verison), a Russian online real estate service provider, is definitely getting attention and brand awareness because of these ads.

But is brand awareness more valuable than positive brand image?
Is quality more important than quantity? in this specific case?

The service offer and the aesthetics of the site are positive enough to potentially overcome the association I make between their brand and the half-relevant commercials.

This is a twist on old marketing. A high-risk marketing initiative in North America yet something that might work in Russia. Only time will tell.

What do you think?

MTV Switch -- Going Green or Greenwashing?

MTV is using its strong influence over youths and young adults for a good cause: it's called MTV Switch.

The 'Emerging Hands'

Found on Ads of the World, this is an original way to communicate their message! It is clear and the call to action is there. The two hands holding the sign are controlled by a small submarine around canals in Amsterdam; the sub better be eletric-powered :D

Their Flash Site

Check it out at mtvswitch.org. The flash site is incredibly slow, videos are even slower to load and I found very little interesting content. I don't see how this site will positively change visitors' habits towards being more environemtally-friendly. The fact that the site is all show and no content is a very big sign of a hollow campaign aimed at increasing their image, not the planet's!

TV Ads

MTV Switch 2008: Flush Less

MTV Switch 2008: The Green Song

MTV Switch 2008: Real Life's Better - Better

My Thoughts

Personally, I find the campaign to be a big PR push with little meat behind it; what saves them from getting bad press is Oglivy's creativity! Two of the ads had a clear call to action: the Emerging Hands and the Flush Less TV ad. However, the other TV ads attempt to drive traffic to their website, which seems to be the focus point of the campaign. Since the site is so weak, the whole campaign lost its credibility.

In conclusion, and to make good use of Stephen Colbert's lines: the tip of my hat goes to Oglivy for a great campaign and the wag of my finger goes to MTV for attempting to greenwash me and exploit the green movement to help their image.
Actions speak much louder than words, and all I saw were words.

What do you guys think?

Shock Tactics in Advertising -- Prevent-it.ca

I'll try to create some continuity with my posts this time by featuring another public awareness campaign. This time it's an initiative of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Canada who launched two sites: prevent-it.ca and youngworker.ca. Their aim is clearly to educate the public with an emphasis on youth and young adults about workplace safety and employee rights. The way the campaign is designed is fairly simple: to use advertising media such as TV and print to drive people to their two websites.

Shock Tactics

The following 5 TV spots were aired on Canadian TV last year and clearly make use of shock tactics to catch someone's attention. I don't know about you, but it definitly had an effect on me since I'm writing a post about it!

The strength of those clips is the fact they make some uses of emotional triggers on top of the shock component. Moreover, they did a great job presenting case studies and actors that their target market could relate to.

We've seen those shock tactics used quite often in the domain of public awareness in examples such as the UK's Departement of Health and Peta.

The main objective of such advertising is to catch one's attention and to stick with them for a long period of time.

However, there are a few down sides that have to be taken into consideration when using shock tactics:

• Dissociation might be created by situations that do not seem realistic to the viewers.
• The shock element may override the message behind it.
  
• It can hurt the image of a company or NGO in the eyes of many who see the tactic as 'last' resort to get the message across.

Check some more of their campaign material there.