How brands keep getting away with bad marketing

With the advent of modern technology, brands nowadays have infinite options when it comes to promoting themselves to us, their consumers. Yet, so many of them seem to pick out the options that just sound like a recipe for disaster.

It's common sense that when you send your user a thousand texts, e-mails, or notifications from your app in rapid succession, you risk annoying them into switching service providers. Tone deaf utilisation of current issues don't sit right with people, and going overboard with jokes can turn many customers off your products. For example, making light of every current issue to champion your product is getting old. When you're using a defamation trial where domestic abuse is involved to sell more fast food, you might want to take a step back and reevaluate your marketing strategy.

Pretty easy line to skirt around, right? 

Which leaves us to wonder why marketing with sleazy jokes is still so rampant despite much criticism, and why our telephone network provider's texts make it impossible for us to roam around without having our phones on silent.

Generally speaking, bad moves on the brands' parts are usually followed by a dip in sales, and much public criticism. But there is a saying we've all heard of that goes "all PR is good PR." It's not a motto anyone should champion, but it does have a slight chance of working.

Nowadays, it's easy for small businesses with limited resources to get buried under their flashier, bigger competitors. When it comes to cases like this, mediocrity is worse than bad marketing. Many restaurants that came under fire for using tasteless jokes as a marketing tool would probably have never been noticed otherwise.

Perhaps that was the attempt taken by the pizza place that came under fire back in 2021 for using straight up pornographic ads. While brands have toned down with the in-your-face sexual jokes, innuendos and borderline misogynistic jokes are still rampant. And they're almost always the burger joints.

That much is easy for anyone to gauge. What's always confused me is why big names continue to use tactics that can't be doing them any favours. They surely don't need negative PR to come into the spotlight. So I evaluated my own attitude and that of people around me towards such advertisements.

For starters, the sort of harmless innuendo that sometimes ventures a little too far? They definitely have an audience they appeal to. For some of these consumers, these sorts of advertisements are aligned with their own sense of humour. Then you have the edgelords who are gigantic supporters of everything they deem politically incorrect in today's society, setting themselves apart from the sheeple. It sounds a little unlikely, but we're living in a time where the same people who claim everyone is too easily offended by everything have a meltdown over the green M&M's change of shoes. Anything is possible here.

Well-known companies usually have a loyal consumer base, so they get away with perpetrating harmful propaganda. That's why that one whitening cream company was thriving for so many years before finally rebranding to a new name that doesn't even make grammatical sense.

I have seen people give up on availing services from certain brands because of their distasteful, often misogynistic advertisement. However, it's easy to do so when, say, the product in question is some random restaurant chain. Not giving companies your business becomes much more difficult when you need to go out of your way to switch service providers. Sometimes at the cost of quality service as well (because we very well know some companies that should really just rebrand themselves as a music label).

Desensitisation also comes into play here. Many food manufacturers have been exposed for using harmful ingredients and still continue to thrive, because after the initial wave of outrage passes, people eventually forget. Tone deaf marketing that can only appeal to a group of privileged people is not even new anymore, because everyone just deems it another desperate attempt at attention grabbing.

At the end of the day though, a bad public image isn't anything to celebrate, and generally does more harm in the long run. It's about time companies started doing better, for the sake of their own images.

Find Zabin Tazrin Nashita at: fb.com/zabintazrin.nashita