Stephen and I were talking about shock adverts the other day, discussing if these are really necessary or not for us to understand the message. It all started after Steph watched this video. This is a TV commercial that was broadcasted in Australia and I think that it is really well done. I’m telling you it is shocking.
What did you think about it? The debate on the efficiency of shock advertisement is still open and discussed by scientists. But the majority of psychiatrists and social scientists seem to agree that the audience will remember more shocking advertisement content. I agree with that as I personally remember a lot of these kind of ads that were made in the past years, but I don’t remember a lot of other ads on TV.
But I also think that there is maximum level of ‘shocking content’ that can be put in an ad so that it will reach its goal. If it is too shocking, people are probably going to have trouble watching it anyway and getting over the form to understand the content. Here is a TV commercial that was made by the British Government and that was banned not too long after the campaign started. There were just too many complaints about it. Once again careful as this is really shocking.
Shocking adverts can certainly work for certain messages and goals, but they need to be made really carefully and wisely. Campaigns on ‘don’t drink and drive’ and ‘drive safely’ are probably the ones that work the most.
Benetton was one of the first brands to use this and I think that it worked pretty well for them. It got people talking about their clothing line and it created a buzz around it. Everyone has heard about United Colors of Benetton because of the ads campaign. The question now is did it reach their goal?
What do you think of shock advertisement? Do you think they can make a good campaign?