Shock Advertising and High Fashion Brands - Essay Example

Shock Advertising and High Fashion Brands Part Introduction Research Background Shock advertising has been around for a long time as advertisers get desperate to grab the customer's attention with a striking image or phrase. Sex in advertising is a very popular way of catching everybody's attention. And it is also a fertile ground for controversy. As Herman-Cohen (2000) stated the use of shock advertising with a mix of sex in the fashion industry is nothing new: "Fashion's plunge into soft porn didn't happen overnight. In the 1960s, the late French photographer Guy Bourdin brought sex and violence to French fashion magazines, while his American counterpart, photographer Helmut Newton, added a fetishistic element beginning in the 1970s. Now lesbian sex and sadomasochism have been added to the lineup." Shock advertising, sex and high fashion brands make an irresistible mix. Over half a century of research has proven to be in favor of sex in advertising as Wikipedia (2005) suggested: "Further evidence comes from Gallup & Robinson, an advertising and marketing research firm which reports that in more than 50 years of testing advertising effectiveness, it has found the use of the erotic to be a significantly above-average technique in communicating with the marketplace, "although one of the more dangerous for the advertiser. Weighted down with taboos and volatile attitudes, sex is a Code Red advertising technique . . . handle with care . . . seller beware; all of which makes it even more intriguing."" Lately the trend has continued with a lot of strength: "In recent years ads for jeans, perfumes, and many other products have featured provocative images that were designed to elicit sexual responses from as large a cross section of the population as possible, to shock by their ambivalence, and often to appeal to repressed sexual desires, which are thought to carry a stronger emotional load" (Wikipedia, 2005). So shock advertising with a sexual appeal in high fashion brands, mostly in magazines in the United Kingdom, is a hot topic that has been around since the development of Marketing. As Advertising is the communication medium of Marketing, it is not strange that this communicative tool has been widely used to convey messages of a shocking sexual nature in the high fashion branding efforts of many marketers along the years. This field of study offers multiple, complex and controversial dimensions to be researched. 2.- Research Problem To what extent shock advertising has been applied to high fashion brands. 3.- Research Aim The value of shock advertising to high fashion brands and consumers. 4.- Research Objectives 1.- To study the impact of shock advertising in magazines with a sexual appeal in high fashion brands in the United Kingdom. 2.- To study the relevance of value marketing through the use of shock advertising to enhance the branding image. 5.- Research Area Marketing area: - Advertising - Marketing Research - Product and Brand Management - Consumer and Buyer Behavior 6.- Rationale of the research This study enables the audience to understand the role of shock advertising in the high fashion industry. Also, it allows the viewers to have a comprehensive knowledge with regard to the public attitude towards this advertising strategy. Moreover, this research project helps to find out how shock advertising could be adopted appropriately. (Separate out the usefulness to myself personally and practically, and also to the world in general) 7.- Usefulness of the research By getting into the secrets of value marketing via shock advertising using sexual appeal we can improve our brands in the marketing arena as knowledgeable marketers. It is not easy to decide when to choose shock advertising and to what extent. We have to take into account the context and the medium, among many factors. By studying this topic we can learn a lot about human nature and the consumer's tastes and preferences when it comes to high fashion products. This kind of research is appropriate to get the necessary insight into shock advertising and its effects, positive or negative, as we are aware that many times our marketing efforts backfire and the negative effects are very high against our brands. So we need to research adequately this topic in order to learn with certain degree of accuracy when to use shocking advertising in the high fashion industry mainly through magazines published in the United Kingdom. Part 2 Literature Review In the quest of achieving our marketing objectives value is a major part of the marketing mix. Our brands are built around the concept of value. And advertising is really a selling activity as David Ogilvy (n. d.) stated clearly at the very beginning of his book "Ogilvy on Advertising": "I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don't want you to tell me that you find it "creative". I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product." And in order to sell our products we have to know our consumers' behavior as Ogilvy said it in the same book: "I am sometimes attacked for imposing "rules". Nothing could be further from the truth. I hate rules. All I do is report on how consumers react to different stimuli." Speaking about rules, when it comes to brand marketing, Dan Herman, PhD (2004) suggested ten ways to build our brands: 1. Creating a Conceived Linkage to a Tangible Benefit 2. Forming a Mental Context 3. Directing an Experience 4. Creating a Means of Self-Presentation 5. Creating a Means to Deliver a Message 6. Building a Social/Cultural Authority 7. Creating 'a Long Hand' 8. Creating an Alter Ego 9. Building an Emotional Gym 10. Facilitating Fantasies Herman (2004) also stated that "consumers love brands because they offer an extra value-that is, one in addition to the core product or service. That value becomes the major motivation for consumers to buy or use the product." So we have to pay attention to value and brand when we deal with any aspect of marketing activity. O'Guinn et al (2003) said in their book "Advertising and Integrated Brand Promotion" that there are five ways that advertising effects brand development and management. They are: 1.- Information and persuasion. 2.- Introduction of new brand or brand extensions. 3.- Building and maintaining brand loyalty among consumers. 4.- Creating an image and meaning to a brand. 5.- Building and maintaining brand loyalty within the trade. For O'Guinn et al (2003) Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) "is the process of using promotional tools in a unified way so that a synergistic communication effect is created. Integrated Bran Promotion (IBP) is the use of various communication tools, including advertising, in a coordinated manner to build and maintain brand awareness, identity, and preference. () IBP retains the emphasis on coordination and synergy, but goes beyond the parameters of IMC. () With the focus on building awareness, identity, and ultimately preference, the IBP perspective recognizes that coordinated promotional messages need to have brand-building effects and not just communication effect." On the other hand, Mohan Sawhney (2004) considers that marketing excellence is achieved through 4 kinds of marketing: Value Marketing; Process Marketing; Collaborative Marketing; ROI (Return On Investment) Marketing. He mentions Peter F. Drucker when he advised to forget the product and to take into account utility, what a product does for the customers. So value according to customers is the following: 1.- Value is defined by customers. 2.- Value is opaque. 3.- Value is contextual. 4.- Value is multidimensional. 5.- Value is trade-off. 6.- Value is relative. 7.- Value is a moving target. (Sawhney, 2004). And the dimensions to consider are: belief, offering, organization, operations, metrics, monitoring. In other words, we have to go from the product mindset to the customer mindset. This is what happens with shock advertising. And when it comes to shock advertising, sex is a major tool for marketers. During the last 50 years research has proven that sex is an efficient tool to grab the consumers' attention (Wikipedia, 2005). The emphasis on value brand building is behind those marketing efforts. Shock tactics are very common in different fields of the human spectrum. For example, some charities use them. The high fashion industry has been famous for their shock advertising. In the United Kingdom the monitoring agency for non-broadcast advertising is the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) (2005a, 2005b). Its Code of Decency states the following in its three articles: "5.1.- Marketing communications should contain nothing that is likely to cause serious or widespread offence. Particular care should be taken to avoid causing offence on the grounds of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation or disability. Compliance with the Code will be judged on the context, medium, audience, product and prevailing standards of decency. 5.2.- Marketing communications may be distasteful without necessarily conflicting with 5.1 above. Marketers are urged to consider public sensitivities before using potentially offensive material. 5.3.- The fact that a particular product is offensive to some people is not sufficient grounds for objecting to a marketing communication for it A major issue for ASA is dealing with shock advertisers. The position of ASA (2005c) is the following: "Advertisers often claim that they are trying to make a point, by deliberately using shock tactics, or that they are trying to challenge traditional assumptions. While such an approach may be intended to provoke thought, it can also shock, or be viewed as socially irresponsible Lately, ASA (2001, 2002a, 2002b, 2003b, 2004) has published various non-broadcast adjudications upholding and not upholding certain complaints about adverts by Calvin Klein Jeans, YSL' Opium perfume, Patrick Cox shoes, Gucci, D&G, etc. In one of those documents ASA (ASA, 2003a; Dabitch, 2003; Gucci, 2003; Marketing Vox, 2003b; Vogue, 2003) dealt with the advert by Gucci with a woman showing the letter G carved on her pubic hair. This advert was not considered to be offensive as the following statements show: "The complainants objected that the advertisement was offensive and sexually suggestive; one complainant objected that it was unsuitable to be seen by children. () The Authority considered that the execution had been carefully targeted and that its sexual nature was unlikely to offend the fashion conscious readership. The Authority considered the image was intimate rather than aggressive and that although it was likely to be considered tasteless by some readers it was unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence." ASA has been involved in many conflicts over shock advertising using sex appeal for high fashion branding (BBC, 2001; Buzzle 2003; Commercial Closet, 2003; Fashion United, 2000, 2003, 2005; Life Style Extra, 2005; Whitehead, 2005; World Online, 2000). One of the most successful shocking adverts has been the one featuring Gucci's G-Spot. This is a clear example of adding value to a brand. The G-Spot and the letter G of Gucci make an irresistible combination. The creator of this advert is Tom Ford, who knows a lot about the business of creating shock with a marketing idea on mind. Ford was interviewed by Vogue (2003a) and this is what the magazine has to say: "Ford meanwhile, whose recent ads have also featured a naked Sophie Dahl and a full-frontal male nude, is ready to take the rap for his new creative. "This campaign doesn't upset me," he told The Sunday Times this weekend. "I think it's great. The G-spot is the ultimate in branding. I even considered selling a Gucci waxing kit in the stores. My goal when I make ad campaigns is to create an arresting image. Since 1995 we have been famous for being sexual and provocative. That's what we do." Steve Robles (2003) from Eros Guide London considers that England is growing up as shock advertising keeps abounding. When speaking about the Gucci advertisement, he said: "Again, not that we're complaining. Obviously, as editors of a site that deals exclusively in content of a "mature" nature, we believe that sex and sexuality is still repressed in popular culture, despite the odd foray such as the Gucci advert. () But of English-speaking western nations, England has shown that it is far more grown-up when it comes to displays of nudity and sexuality than, say, the U.S." He thinks that shock advertising is a good sign: "And maybe the British public is ready for such displays. Despite apocalyptic editorials by the likes of Daily Mail columnist Bel Mooney, who said Ford and Peruvian photographer Mario Testino (a favorite of Princess Di's) were "no better than pimps and those who advertise sexual services in phone boxes," the Advertising Standards Authority has so far logged an unimpressive 16 complaints claiming the advert as "offensive and sexually suggestive." Brand Channel (2005) favors scandals to sell a brand. R. Arora (2005) gives the following advice: "Try to think of strategies which can ring a bell in people's mind and help them notice your brand or your product. Once they do so, then the ball game passes to the product, which should have sufficient value in it to be sold." Brand Channel (2003) has something to say about Benetton: "When Benetton ads depicted shocking imagery and questionable taste, sales soared. Now its toned-down ads actually show the product, and sales are slipping. () Provocation sells () Benetton lacks differentiation in its product and no ad campaign can save that." E. Colyer (2002) from Brand Channel considers that shock advertising is offensive but effective: "They are the advertisements you remember. Whether Benetton's unpleasant images or the provocative play on FCUK, shock tactics will always win column inches. But what does offensive advertising do for the brands It is an advertiser's single aim: grab your attention." Colyer (2003) recognises that things can get out of control: "But sometimes an advertising agency goes too far - and risks damaging the reputation of the very brand it seeks to enrich. The agency succeeds in attracting attention, but undermines the very products it is trying to promote. The Sophie Dahl campaign, for example, certainly seemed to backfire. After receiving almost 1000 complaints from the public, the UK's Advertising Standards Authority ordered the poster to be removed from public billboards. It stated that the advertisement, as a poster, was "sexually suggestive" and likely to cause "serious or widespread offense." Coyler (2003) cites Bean and states the following: "For Bean, advertisements for products and services should all follow a single, simple strategy: to be consistent with the brand. "People hate being misled, when advertisements are full of untruth. If you use taboo subjects in advertising, but the rest of your product and service is not risqu, you're running into trouble."" This is a very important point. If there is no consistency between the product and the advertisement, then things are not going to work out well. But Colyer (2003) knows that shock advertising has a limit in the fact that it is to be used wisely, especially in the world of fashion: "Only occasionally, then, should the advertising and marketing cause offense by breaking taboos. The environmental campaigning organization Greenpeace, with its "spiky" brand, may get away with it, but does risqu work in the world of clothes and fashion Eamonn Stores, Clients Services & Media Director with digital communications agency Profero, finds good and bad examples. "I don't subscribe to sensationalist advertising," he says. "Sometimes people use the media to say something about their brand that isn't there. Do you, for instance, see evidence of Benetton as a company taking risks in the rest of their business as they do in their advertising On the other hand I don't see FCUK as offensive. For me it is a play on a word that I accept as part of everyday language. It has irreverence and humor." The French Connection shocking advert with the letters FCUK for the initials of the French Connection United Kingdom is a good example of a witty advert for Coyler (2003): "FCUK is perfect for the fashion conscious late teens and early twenties. Four letters, carefully rearranged, effectively spell out an irreverence for parents, conformity and censure. The marketing might upset an older generation, but French Connection's target consumer loves it. () Perhaps the company should take comfort in Bean's summation. "The real risk in advertising is not being seen at all, so if in doubt play dangerously. Shock tactics are a solution for the desperate. What makes the effects lasting is to go back and figure out on what grounds the shock is being made. The reason that FCUK has lasted is that chief executive Steve Marks has been looking at radically doing his business, not just the advertising. The FCUK brand is about attitude to life. () FCUK's advertising is consistent with its philosophy. Whether on a billboard, a T-shirt or a cranberry vodka, it cheekily puts its finger up to convention. M. Comerford (2004) from The Chicago Daily Herald speaks about shock advertising in the following terms when citing Christie Nordhielm: ""In advertising you want to do two things," said Christie Nordhielm, assistant professor of marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. "First, break through the advertising clutter out there. Second, you want (the ad) to be remembered. They certainly do that."" Comerford (2004) keeps saying: "Driving the shock factor in advertising is the fragmentation of the media, Nordhielm maintains. What is shocking to an audience watching a religious channel probably will not be shocking to someone watching MTV, where advertisers and programmers have to go to more extreme lengths to catch the eye of the youth market." On the other hand, there are people who are openly opposed to shock advertising. In the Christian and the religious communities few people favor shock advertising using sex appeal as a marketing weapon. R. Buckley (2003) defines himself as an Ederly Christian Gentelman. He is shocked about so much shock everywhere. We can say that Buckley is saturated: "For an Elderly Christian Gentleman, the culture shock is, simply, quite devastating. () The very air we ECGs breathe today is a culture shock in which we are immersed, and can only lament. As they sang in an old Negro spiritual we loved as children: "Dey ain't no hiding place down here."" V. Herman-Cohen (2000) in Los Angeles Times showed in his article that money is also a driving factor when doing shock advertising in the high fashion industry: "Ungaro America, said the real intention of the ads, by photographer Mario Sorrenti, was to show the clothes in crystal-clear detail. As for the theme It's surrealistic,'' said Kramer. I think it's a bit like contemporary art. You look at it and see what you want.'' Evidently, Ungaro is seeing dollars. Said Kramer: Our sales have gone through the roof this season and last.'' Media Awareness Network (2005) researched the case of Calvin Klein as a shock advertising phenomenon. This is what they found: "Klein is not alone in his use of controversial images in advertising. After all, the whole point of advertising has always been to attract attention, and fashion advertising is notorious for its exploitative use of young men and women. But one senses that there is a new conservatism among consumers, who are fed up with X-rated images hawking everything from beer to video games. In continuing to push the envelope, designers like Klein may find that they have pushed the patience of their consumers too far. A possible backlash to this campaign occurred in 1999, when Klein launched an ad campaign for his children's underwear line. Due to public furore, these ads were pulled 24 hours later." Angelo Fernando (2000) complains about the double standard when it comes to deal with shock advertising. For example, he finds more shock on Radio and TV: "Benetton and Calvin Klein ads may be disturbing and crass, but they are only doing what Jerry Springer and Howard Stern have been doing for years in a liberal infosphere." There is no doubt that Angelo Fernando (2000) has made a strong point when he stated the following: "In a mediasphere where Jennifer Lopez could appear practically nude on stage to present a Grammy award, who is to fault advertising that only takes its cue from such 'liberal' commercial environments It drives the wedge deeper between our so called standards: innuendo and risqu footage is OK when packaged in radio and movies but horrifying when attached to a sale of a product or service. Where are the moral guardians when rap music is permitted to contain expletives and racial slurs (albeit with a warning label) in the name of freedom of expression, but products and services have to adhere to a higher standard I am not condoning this brand of shockvertising one bit, but my point is this: before society raps advertisers on their knuckles, it had better look at other more powerful opinion leaders as well." Angelo Fernando (2000) kept pushing forward when he said: "Five years ago, Calvin Klein used what were evidently teenagers in suggestive poses and suggestive voice-overs for print and TV ads, attracting what it always craves: controversy -which is another word for publicity, which is another word for free advertising. () As for Benetton, Sears has stopped selling its clothing line in its 400 stores nationwide because the 'death-row' ads have crossed the line. But when I last checked, NBC is still carrying Jerry Springer. His topic today: "Destin thought her fiance' bisexuality was just a phase...until she found him in the arms of a male lover". If you had to choose between the programme and a Benetton ad, which one would you allow your nine-year old son to be exposed to" On the other hand, Bruce Grierson (1998) warned us about the brainwashing effects of shock advertising in his article "Shock's new wave. Advertisers scramble for new ways to shock an unshockable generation" in AdBusters magazine. Grierson narrates the time when a psychiatrist named Ewen Cameron used to work for the CIA around World War II. His duty was to experiment on brainwashing. Grierson makes a parallelism between brainwashing and shock advertising but directed to people that can't hardly be shocked at all. Let's see: "In a broader sense, though, Ewen Cameron's work never really stopped. Under new stewards and another guise, the "electric lobotomies" continue apace. The subject pool has expanded from a few dozen people to a couple of billion. The driving messages have become more sophisticated: cryptic, alluring, alarming. There are no longer called implants. They are called ads. () All of which explains the rise, in recent years, of so-called "shock" advertising. For ads to work, the industry is conceding, they have to be rare and juicy and in your face. They have to offer back-of-the-cabinet images few of us have ever seen -- like a black horse humping a white one, or a supermodel taking a dump, or a woman aiming a jet of breast milk into another woman's cup of coffee. () Art, it is said, has no interest in morality. Which may be where art and advertising -- at least shock advertising -- differ. Shock ads are all about morality. They usually involve sniffing out, simply for the sake of provocation, the ripest cultural taboo. () Shock advertisers tend to measure success by the controversy their campaigns generate. If you can't shock the middle class, shock William Bennett and Newt Gingrich. Piss off the powerful jackleg Republicans. Earn some salty reprobations on the Congressional record. Shock Jesse Helms. Conservatives are about the only people you can still get a rise out of these days. That's why shock advertisers love them. They need them. () And so we've learned not to be fazed by anything. Even as advertisers mine the most sacred parts of ourselves for distribution and resale, we sit passively by, pretending not to care and ultimately not caring. Baby, we are teflon-coated, like those skillets from France. The media can't touch us because we are cynics. But could it be that we are cynics because the media has already touched us Touched us there () Selling to a generation of cynics requires real finesse. Advertisers must acknowledge their own naked calculatedness, acknowledge that the customer is wise to that naked calculatedness, and then still try to make the sale. () What shocks us now Maybe nothing. We can be titillated, still, we can be amused, but perhaps we can never really be shocked. To be shocked requires a measure of innocence you rarely find these days in people over five. More than we care to admit, maybe we have already been depatterned, like Ewen Cameron's psychiatric patients." We can see that shock advertising in the high fashion industry through magazines has gone through many different phases of controversy. Shock advertising is an excellent tool if done appropriately taking into account the context, the audience, the medium, etc. It's not good to go too far because the brand can suffer when a campaign backlash as we have seen in this research study. The G-Spot and Gucci combination is remarkable for its powerful message going across. In this case the branding accomplishment comes from the meaningful association between the letter G of Gucci and the G-Spot with the strong sexual appeal. Part 3 Methodology 1.- Introduction We tried to be epistemological at all times in our efforts to find the truth about this research topic. As it is a complex and controversial theme with multiple dimensions such as the context, the medium, the audience, etc., we tried to stick to the facts as much as possible. So we followed our method with consistency and in a coherent manner. 2.- Research Design We mostly used Internet sources. We did an extensive search on the Web and then we organized the data according to the themes taken into account. After getting all the information we did the Literature Review and drew our conclusions according to the facts discovered all along the research. 3.- Research Approach We tried to be consistent and coherent all the time. We also tried to have a comprehensive and exhaustive idea of the topic by researching as much material as possible. We always did our best to be rigorous following a scientific method at all costs. 4.- Data Collection Method and Research Instrument The research instrument was the Internet and we did several searches on Google.Com with the keywords "shock advertising", "value marketing", "Calvin Klein, ads, shock", "Versace, ads, shock", "D&G, ads, shock", "Patrick Cox, ads, shock", and "Gucci, ads, shock". 5.- Sampling Process Population On Google.Com we searched 10 pages for "shock advertising" and gathered 68 websites from this extensive search in order to have a wide view of the topic under study. The other searches were done at a lower degree of depth because they were secondary in nature. At the end we only used 40 sources for the actual research. Sampling Frame The sample websites dealt with different aspects of shock advertising. Most of them favored it and some of them expressed their positions against it. So we tried not to be prejudiced about the content of the websites and we just did a significant and relevant sampling. 6.- Method of Analysis As our method of analysis we used an inductive approach, but in certain cases we had to approach the problems at hand through deductive and abductive thinking. Bibliography Angelo Fernando. What's so shocking about shock advertising (April 2000). (online). Availabler from: http://www.angelofernando.com/Shockvertising.htm (Accessed 13 November 2005). Arora, R. Traditional marketing is out; Shock marketing is the new thing. (9 October 2005). In Always On Network. (online). Availabler from: http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.phpid=P11970_0_5_0_C (Accessed 13 November 2005). Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). About the Advertising Standards Authority. (2005a) (online). Available from: http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/about/ (Accessed 12 November 2005). Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). History of Ad regulation. 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