Going snarky: When good causes have bad campaigns
- Tue, August 11 2009
- Filed under: Marketing essentials
Maybe I’m missing something, but I really dislike this campaign, called Tappening (sounds like a straight-to-video horror movie). More like a nonprofit marketing horror. Even though I’m a fan of the creative people behind it, I’m giving it two thumbs down.
Here’s the idea: Spread lies about where bottled water comes from to show that bottled water marketing is a lie.
Huh?
You can even go to this website to make up your own lies to spread. So far there are precious few submissions and most are incomprehensible. Nuff said.
The main website isn’t bad, but here are the problems with the overall campaign:
1. It takes far too much thought to figure out. 99% of people won’t do it. The 1% who will are the choir. Already converted.
2. It’s a bad idea to spread falsehoods as a way to counter them, even if you’re trying to debunk them. There is psychological research showing people only recall the myth, not the debunking part.
3. It’s not a good idea to position yourself as a liar. Even ironically. Joe Isuzu was sort of funny but did he sell cars? (Not really - he only added 1% to sales and the brand is dead now.)
4. There’s not a clear call to action. Lie? That’s the call to action? That’s not going to change the world for the better.
I always say ad campaigns fail because they lack a clear call to action or a clear line to the consumer’s heart and mind. I think this misses the mark on both points - and builds general cynicism. None of that helps the environmental cause much.
I’d love to be proved wrong, but I’m afraid I’m right.
Comments
Thanks for this post, Katya. Aside from the methodology, another aspect of the campaign that’s a little disturbing is the misinformation in the FAQ on their website. One example: it’s simply not true that “...more than 99.9 percent of Americans live in homes where unlimited amounts of fresh, treated water is available…” That just strikes me as irresponsible. It’s too bad, because the strategy and intention seem to be good.
With you 100% on this one. Lies are not good positioning, to put it mildly, and people do indeed remember the lie and not the debunking.
On a related point, there seems to be a good deal of unfortunate “cleverness” in ads for environmental causes. I saw a collection of such a while back, sadly tagged as “best environmental ads.”
I’m sure lots of people will disagree, but I believe these images of disaster, obviously designed to provoke fear, are profoundly misdirected.
Psychological research tells us that frightening images trigger paralysis and fatalism. What’s more, they undermine the creativity, sense of personal power, and hope that are fundamental to effective action.
When we use images like these, we’re actually undermining our cause by making it less likely that people will feel able to act. Yikes.
As always, love your blog. Thanks!
Pam
Thanks, Pam. I agree completely. Jeff Brooks talks a lot about this, too—the dangerous urge to be clever and cute.
Thank you for sharing your opinion on that particular campaign. Many people may take one look at the design and find it quite clever, but I agree that lying - no matter the cause - has no place in a marketing campaign.
I found the Tappening ads simply confusing. The so-called “lies” told here and the blatant lies told by bottled-water manufacturers are cut of the same cloth: too-clever ad execs with too much time on their hands and too little brainpower.
It’s an old axiom that the quickest path to failure uses good advertising to sell bad products. Perhaps a corollary is that the second-quickest path is using crappy advertising to sell a good product.
Neither bottled-water manufacturers nor environmentalists have a lock on honest advertising, but I’d say that all in all the environmentalists still hold the high ground because, in the end, they’re not the ones terrorizing the planet with tons of waste plastic cast left circling in two oceanic eddies equalling four times the size of Texas.