This past August Fluid Salon, located in Edmonton, came out with a very interesting advertisement that caused some stir in social media. Originally attempting to target women to “look good in all you do” eventually led to targeting major news stations as CTV.
This advertisement shows a woman all dolled up sitting on a couch with what appears to be a black eye and a ‘wealthy’ man standing behind her holding a necklace with a rather large diamond. To me, this does not look like an advertisement for beautiful hair and a ‘look good no matter what’ slogan. This advertisement looks to me that people can get away with with domestic violence by simply doing your hair pretty and getting dressed up.
In a recent CTV article the owner of the salon was defending her choice of running the advertisement and claims that we as the targets of media are perceiving it with the wrong intentions:
“We want people to talk about it. It’s supposed to gear up some sort of discussion,” said Sarah Cameron. “Look at her; she’s not looking at him. Who’s to say she’s not getting ready to get up and walk away? It’s how everybody perceives it.”
[http://edmonton.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110829/edm_hairad_110829/20110829/?hub=EdmontonHome]
Looking past the message associated with this advertisement, Fluid Salon does show the main reason for their display – Hair! The woman on the couch does have her hair made up rather well showing that you can have this gorgeous hair if you come to our salon.
I believe that Fluid does not have too much competition at this moment in the hair salon industry. Yes, this advertisement worked to grab social media’s attention, but they did this in such a negative manner basically advocating for what most people in society believe is wrong.
Hopefully Fluid can design a new advertisement next time that does not portray the same negativity shown here.
Really good post on a potential marketing mistake. I definitely agree with your conclusion.