Marketing Through Crisis
A Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, formerly little known outside
Denmark, has recently been attracting the attention of millions of
people--the leaders, the public and the media of numerous countries
around the world--because of the cartoons it published on September 30,
2005. In several countries, some individuals even decided to set the
Danish embassy on fire because they felt the drawings were disrespectful
to Muslim beliefs.
Thus, Jyllands-Posten
has become as well known a European newspaper as The Independent or
Libération. The only drawback is that it's hard to pronounce its name (this
is a Scandinavian tradition, I guess). If it had an easier name, and you
conducted a survey right now asking people to tell you the name of a
European newspaper, this is the one they'd give. As it is, they'd say
"the one that published the cartoons."
When Mehmet Ali Birand
asked Gamze Özçelik if she was aware of the positive consequences of the
video scandal she was involved in, everyone accused him of being rude.
Maybe this was true, but he was still making an important point: lots of
people have heard her name because of this scandal.
On February 12, the
singers taking part in a Cem Karaca tribute album were guests on the TV
program "Televizyon Makinası." The program's viewers won't be able to
forget the album for a long time--not because of its quality, but
because an "on-the-air-crisis" concerning the copyrights of the songs on
the album took place during the program.
In terms of their effect
on fame, there's no difference between being humiliated by an illegal
video, having people discussing the legality of your music album and
getting millions of people angry at your newspaper because of some
drawings. If we're talking about the demolition of the line between "good"
and "bad" ways of marketing, we can even mention some low- quality
commercials that market their products much better than high-budget
advertising campaigns. For instance, people have never forgotten about
Sörf chocolate bars precisely because of that "silly" ad
featuring Rüştü Reçber ("Gol yemem, Sörf tabii ki yerim"*).
A banned book will gain
popularity because its "inappropriateness" arouses people's curiosity.
TV channels will interview an "ordinary farmer" like Kemal Öncel simply
because Prime Minister Erdoğan argued with him. (If they had had a calm
conversation, no one would have heard of Öncel.) Since gaining attention
is the premiere way to market a product (and everything/everyone that
needs to make money has to be marketed somehow), it doesn't matter any
more how you bring a name or a brand to people's notice.
It's hard to decide to
what point a scandal or a crisis becomes intentional, but it's easy to
predict that the tactic of gaining attention through negative publicity
will continue to be used in the future. Being banned/considered
inappropriate leads to being seen as mysterious/confusing, which is
exactly what people are looking for to spice up their lives.
*For those who don't know Turkish: the play on words will be lost if the
sentence is translated into English. Anyway, it might be better not to
understand this slogan.
İsmail O. Postalcıoğlu (POLS/III)
ismail_orhan@yahoo.com
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