Fluid hair salon (3rd found content)

This advert for the Canadian hair salon, Fluid is a bad advertisement due to the controversy it sparks as it displays a disturbing scene. It is trying to stress the importance of always looking chic, even when your boyfriend has beaten you up using the tag line ‘Look good in all you do’ and a female with  black eye and a menacing man behind her. This is taking the shock tactic too far that it is not effective. And puts the viewer off the brand since it seems it is trying to promote domestic violence. The main objective of an effective advert is to gain the attention of the viewer (White, 2007) and adverts of a shocking nature can do such a thing by surprising viewers. However in some cases such as this one, when fear is created in a disturbing manner this will lose attention. For instance, viewers ignore scary and shocking adverts as they cannot relate and therefore take no notice, (Williams, 2009).

But perhaps the extreme lengths the advertisement has gone to could work to the brand’s advantage as it does get viewers discussing it and therefore increases brand exposure. However some researchers argue that offensive advertisements, may be successful in the short term in increasing public attention but in the long run the customer base and brand name could be tainted (Prendergast, Wah-Leung and West, 2008; Prendergast, Ho and Phau, 2002).

Javed, E. M. B., & Zeb, H. Good shock or bad shock: What impact shock advertisements are creating on the mind of viewers?.

Prendergast, G., Ho, B. and Phau, I. (2002) ‘A Hong Kong view of offensive advertising’. Journal of Marketing Communications. Sep, 8 (3), pp. 165-177.