When it comes to marketing and promotion, be it advertising for a product or service, or raising awareness for a particular issue, it doesn’t seem like there is such a thing as too much exposure. Yet, a few particular cases come to mind in which I can’t describe the attempts at promotion as anything else— a promotion that works so well that the very purpose that it seeks to spotlight becomes overshadowed by the campaign itself, becoming an undeniable example of a tree obscured by its own forest.
Perhaps the most recent and discussable example of this is the annual #BellLetsTalk campaign that swept Twitter off its feet, with each tweet of the hashtag turning into five cents towards mental health initiatives within Canada, all while aiming to tackle one of the largest issues surrounding the treatment of mental illness— the societal stigma and discrimination that continues to affect those with mental health problems. With well over $6 million raised, it is no question that the first goal of the campaign was a crushing success.
But what of the second half? It is much trickier to analyze the change in mannerisms and opinions of the general population, but I would argue that this side of the matter was left grossly neglected. Not by Bell itself— the company made sure to continue articulating this objective throughout the campaign— but by the Twitter users who took up the hashtag and accepting Bell’s challenge to raise as much money as possible within a twenty-four hour window of time. The majority of tweets containing #BellLetsTalk were simple explanations of the “five cents per tweet” matter, and excited encouragement for other people to tweet with the hashtag as much as possible. In turn, tweets describing school lunch menus and complaining about a lack of sleep were slapped with #BellLetsTalk before sent into void of the internet, meaning that any sort of search of the hashtag itself yielded more mundane tweets about lazy cats and cold coffee than actual discussion about the issues surrounding public views on mental illness.
This should sound quite familiar to another viral attempt at fundraising that took the world by storm— the Ice Bucket Challenge of last year, aimed to promote awareness and raise funds for the research of Lou Gehrig’s disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS). While the success of the campaign’s fund raising cannot be denied by the nearly $80 million raised, once again the less tangible goals fell quickly into neglect as the challenge became more of a publicity stunt for celebrities to participate in, allowing to easily boost their image as being ‘involved’ and ‘generous’.
Social media isn’t the only offender in this regard— much controversy has surrounded the advertising associated with breast cancer awareness, with slogans such as ‘save the boobies!’ or ‘save second base!’ plastered onto t-shirts and plastic bracelets. Aside from the obvious reality that mastectomies are not uncommon in order to remove malignant tumours, the campaign also strikes an odd chord in the fact that it is focused on saving a body part more than the human itself. If the promotion was aimed to do anything aside from profiting on the merchandise (say, bring awareness into the reality of living with breast cancer), it certainly didn’t do a good job of it.
So what’s the deal? Why does it seem that every attempt of marketing a worthy cause ends up more farce than force? If I had to blame any single cause, I would point towards the great shift that we’ve seen in successful advertising in the past few years. Advertisements gone viral spread like a disease through social media, but to the point that the product it is advertising becomes drowned by whatever joke or gimmick afforded such attention (the Old Spice commercials featuring half-naked men with diamonds on horses is a poster boy for this). Our own consumption of media blinds us from the message intended by the creators, choosing instead to focus on the aspects we find amusing.
It seems as though advertisers are beginning to understand this. Advertisements are quickly becoming more and more estranged from the product or service that they are attempting to sell, resorting to bizarre skits and quirky catch-phrases in a desperate attempt to catch even a brief hold of the internet’s small attention span. With some great luck, they might succeed, get their day or week in the spotlight, fade back into obscurity, and return to the drawing board to try to win the lottery a second time. Money is made, but the longterm impact is minimal at best.
Is there a definitive remedy for this issue of campaigns losing their message in their own virulence? Of course there are steps that can be made in the right direction— for example, if there is little message to be delivered in the first place, such as the ‘Save the Boobies!’ style of promotion, there is no hope in the audience ever taking it the right way.
Beyond that, though, it largely falls into our own hands to make sure that we don’t strip away the morals for our own short-lived amusement. Next time there is a surge of interest in a particular issue or cause, try to participate in legitimate conversation about it. Educate yourself and others about the matter, especially if it interests you. Most importantly, though, try to do something that will elicit genuine change— volunteer your time, donate resources, or even just try to inform your peers on what they might not know. Maybe it’s not much, but if no lasting improvements are made while a campaign has the limelight, it can hardly be called a campaign at all.
That said, be sure to look before you leap aboard the bandwagon. #Kony2012
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