This isn’t a rhetorical question. i truly want to know!
Do crass, “low brow” marketing campaigns like this real piece of… umm… work 😉 from Domainz (the official -and at one time, only – domain registry for New Zealand and their .nz domain space) actually bring in respectable response rates despite unrespectable theme, copy, or visuals?
The following is a screenshot of the email campaign piece that landed in my inbox last month (it was an animated image; the screenshot shows what was the final frame):
There was matching messaging on their website too. Thankfully this brain-dead campaign appears to have been put to rest.
I was surprised the email even made it into my inbox. With a Subject line of “Give Tough Times the Finger” you’d think it would have gotten reported by recipients to SpamCop as spam more than a few times.
In my opinion, marketers CAN go too far. Some even get into the realm of truly warped and downright offensive. When marketers offend our sensibilities we (the targeted recipients) shut down. It can even alienate us from their brand. I know I (a customer) lost a little bit of respect for Domain because of this campaign. Not enough to move my business from them (i.e. transfer my .nz domains to another registrar). But It’s like they made a withdrawal from their brand equity “bank account”, with me. (I’m borrowing from Stephen Covey’s metaphor of the “emotional bank account”).
So what do you think? Should marketers who practice “crass marketing” deserve an “Attaboy!” or a smack? Or a demotion?
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They deserve a smack and demotion. And also, one would hope there would be a sufficient outcry that the practice would cease.
In the US at least some casual remark about gender and ethnicity can bring down the wrath of the media and their cohorts more quickly than an insulting advertisement. There is too often a twisted sense of values, in my view.
Hey if it didn’t work – then they wouldn’t be doing it….just like all of those late night infomercials.
people, get a life…….
if this kind of little issue ticks you, then step out of your box and see what is happening around the world…
quite a petty thing to complain about
Italians have a great history of emotive ad-creatives; think United Colours of Benetton. Certainly the advertiser in question is being crass by subjecting us, the audience, to a horror of ad-creative but otherwise Crass advertising is important to our emotional makeup. Without this genre or advertising autonomy there wouldn’t be the freedom to know what is so bad in the world and really what is so good in equal measure. I personally would complain to the advertiser in question and let them know that knives, assault and murder are not connotations or associations a brand or service should have.