As usual, on Friday, I was having drinks with Vermajee, my friend, mentor and one of the sharpest brand consultant minds. The conversation began somewhere else and, between the second and third glass of whisky, it moved to brands, advertising and the increasingly blurred line between provocation and controversial advertising.
“Do you think controversial advertising has now become part of media planning?” I asked.
Vermajee smiled. “Why ‘now’? It’s not new. We in communication always knew that controversial advertising attracts attention.”
He reminded me of the 1995 Tuff Shoes campaign featuring Milind Soman and Madhu Sapre. The nude photograph featuring a python sparked an enormous uproar and eventually led to a 14-year legal battle. Yet the campaign also won creative awards and, according to those involved, the shoes sold out.
“So what is different today?” I asked.
“The scale, speed and predictability of the reaction,” he said.
That, I thought, was the real issue.
Today, controversy does not have to be an unfortunate consequence of advertising. It can almost be engineered into the campaign. A provocative creative generates outrage, outrage generates conversation, conversation generates sharing, and sharing generates earned media. The brand gets a media multiplier that conventional media buying would struggle to deliver. And the team gets appreciated for the over-the-edge work.
The Sydney Sweeney campaign for Novig is a contemporary example. The campaign deliberately uses sexual imagery around sport and has attracted criticism from women athletes and enormous online attention. Sweeney is also a strategic partner and equity holder in Novig, making her involvement more than a conventional celebrity endorsement.
“But surely controversy isn’t always about nudity,” I said.
“Of course not,” Vermajee replied. “It can be anything that touches a cultural or social nerve.”
He was right. It can be a fashion brand borrowing from traditional Indian craft without adequately acknowledging its origins. Prada’s use of the Kolhapuri chappal sparked precisely that debate, while Fendi’s mirror-work Baguette has recently triggered another argument around Indian craft and cultural appropriation. In the Fendi case, however, the story is more nuanced: the brand had actually worked with Indian artisans, and the social-media description of it as a “Navratri bag” was not Fendi’s own positioning.
It can also be the depiction of a festival, religion or cultural practice. GIVA’s Raksha Bandhan campaign featuring Kriti Sanon became controversial over both her styling and the depiction of her tying a Rakhi to a pet dog, eventually leading the brand to withdraw the advertisement.
“So controversy can come from nudity, culture, religion, gender, design inspiration, comparison, humour, celebrity behaviour or even a product claim,” I said.
“Exactly. And sometimes the brand knows beforehand that the work will give rise to controversies and they release it salivating on that thought of earned media multiplier.”
Earlier, a controversial advertisement could surprise the brand as much as it surprised the consumer. Today, some brands seem to walk into controversy fully aware of what they are doing and even welcome it as part of the craft.
Vermajee wasn’t convinced this was necessarily bad.
“Sanjeev, if the creative gets noticed, discussed and remembered, why should the marketer complain? Advertising is supposed to get attention.”
I agreed, but only partly.
Attention is necessary. Brand recall is the test.
If consumers remember Sydney Sweeney but not Novig, Milind Soman and Madhu Sapre but not Tuff Shoes, the creative may have won the attention battle while the brand lost the branding battle.
And that is where I believe the line must still exist.
There is nothing wrong with challenging convention or deliberately building some controversy into the craft. Like hing ka tadka, the right amount can make communication more interesting and memorable. But you must be reasonably sure you can control the outrage it may trigger.
Because knowingly using controversy is like riding a tiger. You may get the attention, reach and earned media you wanted. But if you lose control, the tiger may eat the marketing head, if not the brand.
Vermajee took another sip of his whisky. “So the question is not whether controversy works?”
“No,” I said. “It is whether, after the controversy is over, people remember the brand—or only the controversy.”
He nodded. This time, neither of us had anything more to add.
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Image generated using ChatGPT and first used on mxmindia.com
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