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Communication Strategies to Respond to Criticisms against Controversial Advertising:
Evidences from Thailand
Suwichit (Sean) Chaidaroon, University of Sydney, Australia
Kawpong Polyorat, Khon Kaen University, Thailand
Abstract
This paper argues that there are occasions where controversial advertising benefit marketers,
consumers, and publics at large. Yet, controversial advertising may also result in negative
consequences. Therefore, marketers who decide to use controversial ads in their campaign
need to be prepared to respond to unexpected situation. Consequently, the paper discusses
legitimisation of controversial ads. It also presents Image Restoration Strategies marketers
can use to justify their use of controversial ads followed by some illustrative cases from
Thailand. Finally, questions for future research on this topic are provided.
Introduction
Controversial advertisements have been more and more pervasive in the market these days.
Marketers may deliberately or unintentionally make their advertisements controversial. When
ads are deliberately created to be controversial, the intent of marketers is most likely to gain
attention from the targeted audience and bring up positive results. However, when the ads are
unintentionally controversial, they can lead to unintended negative consequences which may
be harmful to organisational reputation. Moreover, there might be times when marketers are
intentional in making their campaigns moderately controversial but their ads result in
unintended negative consequences as marketers cannot control the controversy. As a result,
people who receive the message from the campaigns find the ads too offensive. Therefore, it
is important for organisations to be able to handle the situation effectively when responding to
such situations.
It is important to note in the first place that the definitions of controversial and offensive
advertisements differ. Waller (2005) defines controversial ads as “advertising that, by the type
of product or execution, can elicit reactions of embarrassment, distaste, disgust, offence, or
outrage from a segment of the population when presented” (p. 7). Controversial ads, in this
sense, can lead to either positive or negative consequences as a result of extreme emotional
response they elicit from the receivers. Offensive ads, on the other hand, include only those
that result in negative consequences and therefore are subsets of controversial ads.
Studies on both controversial and offensive advertising have gained attention from marketing
scholars. Previous literature has addressed issues including factors influencing controversial
ads (Beard, 2008; Fam, Waller, & Erdogan, 2004; Waller, 2007), culture and controversial
ads (Chan et. al., 2007; Fam & Waller, 2003), perceptions of audience towards offensive ads,
and response to controversial ads (Waller, 2005; Waller & Polonsky, 1996). Waller (2005), in
particular, proposed a response model for controversial ads. His model depicted the
interaction process starting from the audience being exposed to the ads as well as their mental
and physical responses to the ads. Waller’s model provided a good basis for studying
responses for controversial ads as it helped us understand the process from the audience
perspective but it did not discuss communication strategies to handle situations where
message receivers found the controversial ads offensive.
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Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to start a preliminary discussion on how organisations
should communicate with publics to legitimise their use of controversial ads especially when
those ads appear to offend the unintended audience. This topic is important and relevant to
marketers and public relations practitioners who have to work together to restore the image of
their organisations as the controversial ads they have created may be considered a crisis
situation the organisations have to handle. The paper, therefore, proposes that communication
strategies used during crisis situations from literature in the Communication Studies discipline
can benefit marketers in such situations. The paper first presents legitimisation of
controversial ads. Then a typology of communication strategies is discussed as a way to
respond to controversial ads followed by cases of controversial ads in Thailand to illustrate
the use of communication response strategies. Finally, future research direction is provided.
Legitimising Studies on Handling Criticisms against Controversial Ads
To discuss effective strategies that can be used to legitimise controversial ads itself is a
controversial topic. This line of work may be questioned because it may lead to an
assumption that marketers and/or public relations practitioners only try to “spin” the fact and
restore the organization’s image unethically. However, this paper argues that the effective
handling of accounts against controversial ads is sometimes necessary. In many occasions, it
is appropriate and ethical for organisations to repair their images after their use of
controversial advertising if the ad has been well researched and the intention is well justified.
Therefore, this section presents a legitimisation of controversial ads by discussing the
unavoidable causes of offensiveness and dialectical tensions that marketers have to face when
creating advertisement campaigns. Waller (2005) posits that controversial ads can be used
effectively to “cut through the clutter” and given that this type of ads does not always result in
negative consequences, marketers therefore have the right to use this type of advertisement in
their campaign as long as they are responsible and are capable of handling the consequences
of their ads.
Causes of Controversy
When controversial ads become offensive to certain groups of people, it is also important to
acknowledge the causes of offensiveness or identify why people perceive those ads as
controversial. The sense of being offended can be caused by at least three reasons. First,
unintentional ignorance may lead marketers or advertisers to create advertisements that are
sensitive to certain groups of people. This usually happens in the case of international
advertising where cultural norms are different. Advertisers may have done their research on
cultural backgrounds of the targeted audience but it is sometimes beyond the control of
human beings to know everything about every culture. Second, the fact that we cannot please
everyone makes it hard for advertisers to create advertising that is acceptable to every single
person. This is often the case, for example, when marketers try to persuade younger
generations using sex appeal or violence while the older generations find the ads very
offensive. Third, related to the second point, there are always people not targeted in the ad
campaigns who are exposed to the message in the ads (Waller, 2005). Finally, the products,
services, or topics of ads themselves could be sensitive by their nature such as condom ads.
These reasons suggest that the antagonistic responses from people who feel offended from
controversial ads are sometimes beyond the control of advertisers who have tried to be careful
and responsible in creating their advertising campaigns.
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Even though this paper supports that there are legitimate usages of controversial advertisings,
there are times when marketers or advertisers go beyond the acceptable line intentionally and
selfishly use controversial advertisement only for their own benefits. In that case, it is
believed that no communication strategies can be used to protect the organisations as the
evidence of irresponsibility will speak for itself. It is the aim of this paper to start a discussion
on protecting the good use of controversial advertising.
Referring to the definition of controversial ads presented earlier, we can see that as extreme
emotion is elicited, the campaign may result in positive or negative outcomes. An appropriate
use of controversial ads is evident, for example, in many social marketing campaigns where
fear appeal is used to scare audience and prevent them from certain behaviours such as using
disgusting pictures of inner organs of people who smoked, had HIV, or other diseases. In
these situations, marketers have to find the appropriate level of scare tactics they should use
in their campaigns. As such, the merit of controversial advertising exists and its appropriate
use is justified.
The act of balancing opposite points in creating controversial ads is what this paper would
call dialectical tensions in controversial marketing. Obviously, one dialectical tension
between being creative and conforming to the societal norms and regulations complicates the
work of marketers when they to use controversial advertising. On the one hand, marketers
intend to be creative to gain the audience attention while on the other hand they have to
conform to societal norms and regulations so that their ads appear to be acceptable by the
community and regulators. Another dialectical tension is concerned with the level of
information marketers should provide in their campaigns ranging from providing not enough
information to giving too much information. This issue may cause problems as not providing
enough information can be seen as deceiving the audience while providing too much
information may result in information overload and/or audience feeling overwhelmed and/or
insulted. These two dialectical tensions coupled with the reasons why offensiveness is
unavoidable demonstrates that it is hard for organisations that employ controversial
advertising to not offend people at all even though those organisations may have conducted
their thorough marketing research prior to ad release with a good intention. Therefore, it is
important that responsible marketers who plan to use controversial ads are equipped with
skills and strategies to deal with criticisms from the unintended ad receivers who find their
ads offensive.
Crisis Response Strategies for Responding to Criticisms against Controversial Ads
In the Communication discipline, studies on crisis communication have gained more and
more attention from both academicians and practitioners (Coombs, 2005). Literature in this
area covers a wide range of crises such as natural disaster, product recalls, organisational
misconduct, workplace accidents, technical breakdowns, rumours, violence etc. (Coombs,
2007). Interestingly, how organisations respond to complaints about controversial and/or
offensive ads is relevant to studies on crisis communication but not much as been done to
bridge the gap between these two disciplines. Similar to many crisis situations, organisations
that have been accused of using offensive ad can turn this crisis into opportunities if they
justify their practice effectively to antagonistic audiences.
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Image Restoration Strategies
Among theories and frameworks that are used to study crisis communication and employed
by practitioners to respond to crises, Benoit’s Image Restoration Strategies (Benoit, 1995) is
commonly cited. In his framework, Benoit developed five main strategies for organisations to
respond to a crisis including denial, evading responsibility, reducing offensiveness, corrective
action, and mortification. Denial is used to communicate that crisis has not happened or that
the organisation is not responsible for the blame. Evading responsibility can be used when
organisations want to minimise their responsibility to the situation probably by showing that
the situation is beyond their control or that their actions were done with a good intent.
Reducing offensiveness can be used to ease the feeling of harm or illness that the audiences
experience in the crisis. Corrective action is used when the organisation promises that the
similar crisis will not happen again as they put some preventative actions into practice.
Mortification is used when the organisation admits that the crisis is their fault and asks for
forgiveness form publics.1
It is worth noting that these strategies can be used in combination with one another in a given
situation. At the same time, the perception of audience on the severity of issue and whether or
not the organisation is directly responsible for the crisis must be taken into consideration
when selecting strategies to deal with crises. In the case of controversial advertising, it is most
likely that antagonistic audiences would see that organisations who launch the ads must take
full responsibility for the controversy. Therefore, the audiences’ perception on the
organisation’s responsibility and the severity of the issue are probably the main factors that
marketers need to pay attention to when applying these image restoration strategies to respond
to criticisms against their ads. .
Evidences from Thailand
Investigating controversial ads from different cultures can be especially intriguing as different
cultures operate based on different norms. As such, controversial and offensive ads from
some cultures can offer insights into the ways organisations can respond to their antagonistic
audiences who find their ads offensive. Thai advertising is arguably among the most
developed and sophisticated in Southeast Asia (Paull, 2006) and reflects the country’s unique
cultural values (Punyapiroje & Morrison, 2007). Chaisuwan (2003), in particular, studied
unacceptable advertising in Thailand and found that the common unacceptable ads in
Thailand include falsification/puffery, inappropriate advertising based on the context of Thai
society, and advertising that has a negative impact on the target group. In this section,
examples of unacceptable advertising in Thailand are used to illustrate how image restoration
strategies can be employed after the ads are found controversial or offensive.
In a case of advertisement that is proven false from the promise it has given, Lipon F, a dish
detergent, advertised that this product had no smell left on the plates as well as no remaining
cleaning agents. Later an analysis showed that the detergent certainly left no smell but there
were still remaining agents and thus the advertisement was proven false. In this case, the
company argued that the remaining cleaning agents were not in the amount that would cause
any harm to human bodies and thus all consumers needed not worry about its effects. This
demonstrated the use of reducing offensiveness, as the company tried to show the audiences
that the harm was not as serious as it may appear. This case seemed to be somewhat
effectively handle given that the company used scientific information to prove that the
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remaining agents were not harmful coupled with the nature of Thai people who tended to
forget and forgive easily.
Other examples include advertisements that go against Thai values through actions, words, or
executions. For example, a TV ad of toothpaste employed a well-respected University lecturer
to endorse that if you used this toothpaste, you would not feel pain on your teeth. In Thai
language, the word pain in this case is also the same word as reaching orgasm. This ad was
then criticized widely by the publics for using inappropriate language especially as a
university lecturer was used as its testimony. Another example was a detergent ad that used
novices in their storyline. This ad showed that novices or young monks who used this
detergent got brighter robes. In Thailand, religion is highly respected and using religion for a
commercial purpose is considered against the societal norm.
For the most part, when these types of controversial ads are criticized, Thai marketers usually
apologise subtly to the publics and probably adjust or withdraw their ads to maintain the
organisations’ reputation, demonstrating the use of mortification and corrective action as the
marketers admitted the blame and tried to take action to fix the problem. In many Western
crisis textbooks, it is usually suggested that organisations not apologise and use mortification
as the last resort to avoid admitting guilt and legal consequences. However in the case of
offensive ads, the use of mortification after the ads that appear to be offensive is commonly
used probably because ads viewers perceive that negative consequences are direct action of
the organisations and thus they must take full responsibility for the situation. Avoiding
mortification tends to intensify the feeling of those who feel offended and make situations
harder for the organisations to handle.
Conclusion and Implications for Future Research
In summary, this paper has argued that there are occasions when controversial advertising is
legitimate and necessary as long as marketers are responsible its usages and consequences.
Controversial ads do not always lead to negative consequence but the undesirable outcomes
are sometimes unavoidable. As such, marketers need to be equipped with communication
strategies, or Image Restoration Strategies as presented in this paper, to deal with antagonistic
audiences for such unexpected situations.
This paper only provided a preliminary discussion and served as a starting point for this line
of research. More empirical studies and cases are needed for investigation. In particular,
scholars and practitioners need to consider the following questions in order to better employ
controversial ads and to respond to situations when their ads turn offensive to people.
1. What are the factors that contribute to the success and failure of using crisis response
strategies in dealing with criticisms against controversial ads?
2. How can the image restorations strategies be used to respond to criticisms against
controversial ads ethically and responsibly?
3. How can image restoration strategies be used to respond to offensive ads accounts in
different cultures?
4. What are the nature of relevant stakeholders in controversial & offensive ads
especially victims, general consumers, regulators? How do they respond to offensive
ads differently?
Through more comprehensive empirical studies and cases, it is hoped that marketers can
justify their use of controversial ads to publics more effectively and responsibly.
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Footnote
According to Benoit, these five strategies also include their subsets but for the purpose of
this paper only the five broad ones are introduced as they already provide sufficient
guidelines for our discussion.
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