Shockvertising

Summary:
A 10 million dollar lawsuit was made by a woman who was led to believe that she was being stalked. She was sent emails and videos of someone following her in a car that Toyota was trying to advertise through "shockvertising". The form of advertising where you try to frighten people to advertise a product is known as "shockvertising" or terror marketing. Lindsay Meredith a business professor at SFU says that for an ad to be remembered it has to be stand out from all of the others. She compares advertising to a knife, and says that if you’re careful with it, it can be successful. However, if you are not careful with your ad/knife you can get yourself hurt/sued. Oliver Gleeson a vice president of Aylmer’s Pasta company says he doesn't want to advertise their pasta with a commercial that "zooms in on green peppers while a guy with a gravely voice talks about the sauce". He says it is funny how thousands of people can enjoy an ad, but it only takes one person to get offended who calls the competition Bureau to sue the company.

Connections:
This "shockvertising" article has many different connections with Chapter 2 in the Marketing Today textbook. The very first one would be the use of niche marketing. The shockvertising article shows many different examples of niche marketing used in shockvertising such as Diesel having a woman breast feed rotten meat in an attempt to advertise jeans. This advertisement is targeting teenagers and young adults. Another connection to the text is the concept of freedom. Freedom in Canada is the idea that people are free to do whatever they please as long as it doesn't hurt others. This article is asking the same question, "Is this form of advertising that Toyota did go too far?”. Did they go overboard in making someone believe that there was a person stalking them in attempt to advertise a car? The last connection in this article is the idea of demographics. An ad might appeal to teenagers, but it can offend adults. There must be proper research done in order for an ad to be successful.

Reflection:
I personally believe that the advertising Toyota did went a bit overboard. Sure it was unique, and most people would have found the ad entertaining, but they forgot to consider the slight possibility that someone actually take the ad seriously. I believe that it is true that an ad has to be different to be remembered, I find myself mindlessly watching commercials on TV not giving them a thought. The only ones that I remember are the ones that are humorous or the ones with a catchy clip of a song. Also proper research should be done on the demographics of the audience so that the advertisements will appeal to that audience being advertised to and to reduce the amount of viewers that may become offended by the ad.