When old-school adver­tis­ing and PR bump up against mod­ern media realities

Earlier this year Grey Ger­many put out three con­dom ads for Doc Mor­ris phar­ma­cies. They were attempts to wit­tily imply that the human race could have been spared three uber-butchers of the past cen­tury (Mao Tze-Tung, Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden), and the hor­ror and suf­fer­ing they brought, by a sim­ple con­dom (a Doc Mor­ris con­dom, natch). The hum­ble rub­ber as a super­hero and sav­ior of human­ity — there def­i­nitely is poten­tial for some won­der­ful, dark, absur­dist humor in that idea.

I can totally see how a cer­tain young, urbane sec­tor of Ger­man soci­ety could find these ads really quite funny and com­pelling — as they did the suicide-themed Pepsi One ads done last year that offended so many out­side the tar­get demographic.

Now, unfor­tu­nately for Grey and for Doc Mor­ris, not every­one thought the “Evil Sperm” ads were funny. Quite a few peo­ple thought they were racist, insen­si­tive, offen­sive and inap­pro­pri­ate — and now those adjec­tives are asso­ci­ated with Doc Mor­ris phar­ma­cies in people’s heads.

That’s the way it is with humor — some­times you nail it, some­times you bomb. Humor is pow­er­ful in both directions.

A sim­ple alle­gory for old-media folks who still don’t get it: Stand­ing up and telling a fart joke while drink­ing with friends in your rec room = low risk. Stand­ing up and telling a fart joke while drink­ing with friends at someone’s wed­ding party = high risk.

With inter­net adver­tis­ing and PR, you are always at someone’s wed­ding party; you are never safely behind closed doors. If you try to be loud and draw atten­tion to your­self, as adver­tis­ers and PR folk gen­er­ally do, the peo­ple at the next table are going to hear it — and if you’re test­ing the lim­its of good taste with your humor, the odds are that those uptight grand­mas and squares and stuffed shirts who just don’t appre­ci­ate your super-edgy wit are going to think poorly of you and per­haps even whack you with their cash-filled Vera Bradley handbags.

Here are some real­i­ties of the media world of 2009 that old-school adver­tis­ing and PR would be well served to note:

• You can’t expect your mes­sag­ing to stay con­tained within your tar­get demo­graphic. The infor­ma­tion you put out will spread, and that spread is beyond your con­trol. There are only two rea­sons why infor­ma­tion doesn’t spread once it is out: a) peo­ple are just unin­ter­ested in your mes­sage, b) it’s in a lan­guage peo­ple don’t speak (which is really just a sub­set of “a,” frankly). Note: Images like the “Evil Sperm” ads are language-less, so they will jump the lan­guage bar­rier with glee.
• You can’t put the tooth­paste back in the tube. There is no mem­ory hole with the inter­net. Book-burning is so 20th cen­tury. Babel­splatz was yes­ter­day. If you put it out, it is there to stay (even if folks like Ads of the World are will­ing to censor).
• Hid­ing and pray­ing it will go away rarely works. Like every good stand-up comic knows, if your rou­tine is bomb­ing, the only thing you can do is keep talk­ing. It’s dou­ble or noth­ing. The only treat­ment for unfor­tu­nate speech is more speech.

So, what does this mean con­cretely? How does the mod­ern PR/advertising flack deal with the fact that we live in a world where tooth­paste gets irre­triev­ably out of the tube and will prob­a­bly ooze into places we never wanted to have it? Well …

• Craft your mes­sage with the knowl­edge that it will likely go where you didn’t intend it to go. One thing this could mean is don’t do mes­sages that, while they may res­onate with one of your cus­tomer demo­graph­ics, are bound to offend oth­ers. Grey’s “Evil Sperm” and Pepsi’s sui­cide ads fall into that cat­e­gory. Alter­nately, if you can’t resist putting out offen­sive stuff, because it’s just so incred­i­bly funny and will make your tar­gets buy and your col­leagues green with pro­fes­sional envy, then have your mea culpa mar­ket­ing strat­egy ready in advance to take advan­tage of the prob­a­ble result — a social-media shit­storm — as Pepsi did with its sui­cide ads (more on mea culpa mar­ket­ing below).
• Don’t humil­i­ate your­self by beg­ging (or worse, demand­ing) blog­gers to go back and cen­sor your screw-up. As a blog­ger, I say delet­ing posts is cool only in the rarest of cir­cum­stances — gen­er­ally only when an inno­cent indi­vid­ual will be hurt or put in dan­ger by the infor­ma­tion — never when it’s just embar­rass­ing to a com­pany. Try­ing to get blog­gers to cen­sor infor­ma­tion is just going to offend them fur­ther, make them ques­tion your ethics and increase the chance that they will react to you with animosity.
• Have your mea culpa machine ready to roll. If you offend with your com­mu­ni­ca­tions, keep com­mu­ni­cat­ing — your best hope is to dilute your screw-up with evi­dence that you really are upstand­ing folks who made a lit­tle mis­take. If you are really good at this, you can jujitsu the neg­a­tive into pos­i­tive and come out well ahead, with free pos­i­tive pub­lic­ity and good­will among influ­encers and your tar­get markets.

How do you do this?

• Lis­ten to those crit­i­ciz­ing you and under­stand how you offended — this means track­ing all neg­a­tive men­tions and under­stand­ing their gripes.
• Fig­ure out what you are sorry for, what you are not sorry for and pre­pare your response accord­ingly. Be hon­est. Don’t be arro­gant, though — if you’re not sorry enough, or for the stuff you should be, it’s likely the social-media sphere will make you truly sorry if you screw up your apol­ogy as well.
• Con­nect with your detrac­tors per­son­ally and as a real human being. This means actu­ally read­ing their posts about you; fig­ur­ing out who they are and what their per­spec­tive and val­ues are; and engag­ing them on their terms, in their lan­guage and with a con­vinc­ing apol­ogy — and above all, as a liv­ing, breath­ing, fel­low human being, not as a face­less cor­po­ra­tion or as a smooth-talking, snakeskin-suit PR wanker.
• Con­nect pub­licly with your detrac­tors’ neg­a­tive cov­er­age of you. Com­ment on the rel­e­vant arti­cles where appro­pri­ate, write your own arti­cles on the sub­ject if appro­pri­ate, guest blog a response/apology on a detractor’s site where appro­pri­ate. Be smart though. Screw this part up, and you may just fan the flames high again, rather than douse them with the cool­ing water of an effec­tive mea culpa.
• Main­tain the rela­tion­ships going for­ward. Now that you’ve invested the energy into con­vert­ing a detrac­tor into a friend, or at least a “tol­er­ater,” main­tain that rela­tion­ship with com­mu­ni­ca­tion — share infor­ma­tion, ask guid­ance, get feed­back. These for­mer detrac­tors can save you from future screw-ups, or at least are likely to deal with you a bit more sym­pa­thet­i­cally the next time you blow it.

In essence, it’s quite sim­ple, just remem­ber these three things: On the inter­net, you are always talk­ing to the whole world, whether you intend to or not; be cog­nizant of who your mes­sage will offend and decide delib­er­ately if you are will­ing to offend them; and if you must offend, have your mea culpa machine ready to go before you pull the trigger.

This is the media world of 2009 — it’s sim­ple trans­parency and good human rela­tions. There’s really no excuse for blow­ing it. (Via AdAge)Chris Abra­ham is co-founder and prin­ci­pal of Abra­ham Har­ri­son LLC, an inter­na­tional con­sult­ing group with spe­cial­ties in online word-of-mouth/conversation mar­ket­ing and online busi­ness & tech­nol­ogy strat­egy advis­ing. See his pro­file, con­tact Chris via email, Twit­ter, or leave a com­ment below.

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