"Shockvertising" spreads to cut through media clutter

Summary

Toyota is sued by a woman for causing her to have emotional distress through the use of “terror marketing”. The acts include the sending of emails and videos for five consecutive days and it was later revealed that the man stalking her was actually invented by an ad agency which was launching a new advertising campaign to promote Toyota’s new vehicle. Marketing professor Lindsay Meredith of Simon Fraser University says if you are thrown an annoying ad, you would be more likely to remember the product than remembering why you remember it. The analogy used was of a knife, the knife can hurt you if you are not careful. There are many other examples of “shockvertising”. Most of them are outrageous such as Boost Mobile showing a pig eating another pig just to advertise that hidden cell phone fees are wrong. Oliver Gleeson, vice-president of development for SDI Marketing said, “It’s amazing how 10,000 can enjoy an ad but it only takes one person to call the Competition Bureau and make waves.” Only one offended person out of so many can make a difference by suing these companies.

Connections

This article connects with the chapter when the chapter touches on niche marketing. Niche marketing is to sell products to a specific group of people. This connects to terror marketing because terror marketing would only appeal to certain people who might find the ad interesting enough to remember. Terror marketing also connects with the chapter because of demographics. In order to market to the right people, the company must first do a demographic profile in order to market correctly. If terror marketing was used to the wrong type of person, it would not have an effect and therefore not help promote their product.

Reflection

Because it is presently the Information Age, we will be affected by “shockvertising” by quite a lot. Through the use of computer, you are able to have access to a lot of information and the use of terror marketing would also rise. This connects to me a lot because everybody today can be targeted by terror marketing. I think there needs to be something limiting advertisements so they do not go too far such as the woman who was emotionally distressed. I think this may happen to even more people if a line is not drawn limiting the use of terror marketing and nobody should be hurt because of an ad campaign.