The Television Bureau of Canada recently pulled a commercial advertising Science World British Columbia from television, after claiming that the ad featured an excessive amount of violence. In order to explain to viewers that “optimists feel less pain,” the commercial whimsically depicts a man stepping on a nail, being set on fire and hit by a school bus.
This commercial accurately illustrates a trend that I am seeing more often in marketing today. Advertisers are more willing to create ads with shock value and provocative imagery, knowing that the controversy generated from their advertisement will attract more attention. With science being such a broad topic, the agency that scripted the Science World commercial could have produced an ad that was completely different. However, they purposefully chose to create a commercial with a controversial plot line that had a greater chance of being taken off the air. Even though these ads are sometimes loosely related to the actual product or service being promoted, I still consider this marketing strategy to be effective due to the popularity of social media. Articles and reports reacting to the advertisement can circulate around the web, indirectly exposing the ad to a much larger audience. For the Science World British Colombia commercial, a simple Google search reveals that many online news sources have already posted articles discussing this controversial ad.
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