Guest post: Any press is good press: The worst marketing tactics that paid off

By James Maloney

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Do controversial ads really work? Some marketers believe that they do. In fact, they believe that negative press is a good thing. People just love mistakes, blunders and bloopers. This may be true, and there are ads that have been able to get away with it, but then, the risk of running controversial ads may be just a little bit too great.

Some totally bad ads got away with it by making the brand popular and increasing sales. Unfortunately, it can easily be attributed to luck more than the marketing tactic itself. For example: The Beatles came out with the "Yesterday" and "Today" album. Now, the Beatles are the Beatles. These guys were the most popular band at the time. However, the album had a photo of the Beatles smiling with mutilated corpses of dolls scattered around them.

There were too many complaints about the cover of the album that they just had to recall it. Fortunately, the band was so famous that this controversy even made them more popular. Today, if you can find a copy of that album with the mutilated dolls cover, you can easily sell it for thousands of dollars.

It was sheer luck that the marketing tactic, although a big failure, turned out to be a success. This is probably why rock bands today love making controversial albums. However, we need to remember that the Beatles were so famous and everything they did seemed to be perfect. If anyone could get away with this marketing blunder, they could.

There are also those commercials that are extremely annoying. Webuyanycar had a commercial that was voted to be the most annoying in the UK. Fortunately, the business of the company was tied in to this type of commercial. Let’s face it, if you had a car that totally annoyed you, you would want to get rid of it and guess who you would think of first. You would think of that commercial that annoyed you too.

Marketing tactics that end up being very controversial will work, but not all the time. These tactics will only work in the right time and for the right product. Most of the time, controversial commercials only create controversy and may not increase sales at all. How would you consider a marketing tactic to be a success if it does not improve sales?

There are plenty of marketing techniques that will work and they do not have to be controversial. There are ads from decades ago that people still remember and these weren’t controversial at all.

When you use controversy to market a product, there is a very big chance that the product will end up negatively in the public’s eye. This is a risk that some marketers are willing to take in order to boost sales forecasts, but would the business be able to take this risk? Controversy can be a good choice, but not all of the time and marketers should remember this when marketing their brands or products.

This guest post is contributed by James Maloney, author of the Good Business Blog.