Of brave marketing, the prime minister, the pig and me
You know how we spend a lot of time talking about brave marketing?
Last week, for once somebody actually did some.
It did not go well.
I’m referring to the slightly unedifying tale of Studio’s ‘bestiality ad’ and Foxtel’s rapid retreat.
I had a part in it – and the story goes back longer than you might think.
Nearly two years, in fact.
That was when I got to watch the first episode of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror.
Somewhat unfashionably, I don’t approve of piracy, but a relative in the UK posted me a DVD they recorded when the show aired in the UK.
It creates an extremely plausible version a series of events involving the (fictional) British prime minister. The British Princess is kidnapped, and her captor’s only demand is that the PM has sex with a pig on live TV. He prepares to commit the act. That much is in the trailer. To avoid spoilers, I won’t say if he goes through with it or not.
Now clearly, this is dark, dark satire. It was also one of the best, most thought-provoking pieces of television I’ve seen for some time.
And it struck me that should it air in Australia, the plotline of a prime minister having sex with a pig on live TV might be newsworthy.
Just in case, I paused the episode and took a screen grab of a key moment. More than a year later, this would be important.
I rang the company who has local distribution rights to Black Mirror and chatted to a member of the sales team. Nobody had yet picked up the rights, but they promised to let me know when they did.
I must admit, I forgot to chase it. Fast forward to 2012. One night I was idly surfing the programme guide. The episode was on SBS in 20 minutes. It was too late to write a story, although I may have tweeted a recommendation.
And that, I thought, was that. The moment had been missed.
Until I went to an event held by arts channel Studio about three weeks ago.
Studio, by the way, is a somewhat curious beast. Airing on Foxtel, it launched three years ago, replacing the somewhat more sedate Ovation. It is managed by SBS so has access to much of the same content. It’s a good channel. Roughly the same arrangement is also in place for the World Movies channel.
Separate to the main SBS marketing team, there is a small, but hard working and imaginative marketing operation for Studio and World Movies, led by head of marketing Jo McAllister – in my experience, they try harder than any other channel marketing team in the country.
I wrote about their mystery movie screening of Battle Royale during which they took over Goat Island in Sydney last October. It was later shortlisted for the Branded Entertainment Awards.
And the Studio event I mentioned, which in part launched the festival of WTF, took place at the Belvoir Street Theatre. Again it was a great example of imaginative marketing on a limited budget, with dinner taking place on three long tables actually on the stage.
The reel we watched beforehand included mention of Black Mirror.
Later that night, I mentioned to Jo the chance I had missed when it aired the first time round.
She had some good news for me. In a few weeks time, a billboard was going up near Kings Cross using an image from that very series. I would have my story.
Sure enough, on Tuesday just gone,the Studio team emailed me some images, a few minutes after the poster was in place.
As you can see, there’s nothing particularly explicit. You have to know what’s going on to have the context.
Which I provided in my news story, posted just after 8pm that night. Admittedly, I didn’t do it with half measures. The intro was “A large format billboard has been posted in Sydney featuring the British prime minister preparing to have sex with a pig.”
And remember that screengrab I mentioned? I included that with the story too.
The next day, the Sydney Morning Herald and news.com.au had the story too. The Christian lobby and Collective Shout quickly got in on the act.
It was also an easy one for the Outdoor Media Association to put the boot in on – the billboard was not owned by one of their members.
Within 24 hours of the poster going up, Foxtel ordered it be taken down. It was, said Foxtel, a “lapse of judgement” by the Studio marketing team.
My understanding, based on a single but reliable source, is that the decision to take it down was that of Foxtel boss Richard Freudenstein who did not want a battle with the Christian lobby. I understand that the poster had been seen prior to posting by members of the wider Foxtel marketing team. (In fairness, I should also be clear that Jo McAllister is not my source on this.)
So taken down it was. Accompanied by an expensive pulping of the SMH’s Saturday Spectrum insert where another version of the ad – also relatively tame – was included.
(By the way, the handling from this moment, if Foxtel wanted it to go away, was textbook PR perfect. Take decisive action immediately, apologise fully and do it all on the same day.)
Sadly, because it was taken down, it is going to look like it was a rule breaker when the Advertising Standards Board examines complaints, as it inevitably will. The complaints will automatically be upheld because that is the case for all ads which are removed or amended.
Cynics – and if I wasn’t uncomfortably close to this, I would be one of them – would say that this was all a stunt from start to finish.
I don’t believe this to be the case. Firstly, if that was the plan, Studio could have milked it for much longer.
And the billboard was clearly intended to be mildly provocative but to be within reasonable bounds.
Unfortunately a brave piece of marketing lost out to the needs of the wider organisation.
And if we do genuinely care about brave marketing as an industry, that should be disappointing for all of us.
Tim Burrowes
Linkedin
Freedom of the press? Not sure where the line should be drawn here. But even if the PM was getting it on with a pig, whose right is it to be including this in their campaign for any reason anyway. It’s personal, it’s private. Marketing is one thing but responsibility is another. I think the latter takes precedence….
User ID not verified.
Brave? Sure, beastiality on a billboard would take some cojones, but lets not go overboard with this, no one is laying down their lives or even their career for this.
Imaginative? Don’t think so, the beastiality angle would be the obvious choice yes? Even if you went with this angle simply showing the act is hardly a stretch of the imagination.
To me the image implies beastiality and nothing else, not really something I would be inclined to tune in for.
Perhaps another strategy would have piqued consumer interests?
On the other hand the bottom line is getting consumer attention to the story and they surely did get more attention from this then simply running a less controversial image, hell I know i wouldn’t have the faintest about this series if not for a pig and a pants down bloke.
User ID not verified.
Good article Tim, but I wouldn’t call the ad a piece of brave advertising – it was designed to grab maximum attention. That’s not brave – that’s controversial for the sake of being controversial. What’s worse is that the premise of Black Mirror is very provocative in these tech-addicted times so there were plenty of other ways the program could have been promoted to focus the publics attention on the program – though I accept this may of taken longer to achieve than a photo of a man having sex with a pig.
That said, your point about brands never wanting to offend – and climbing down the moment someone speaks out against them – is the bigger issue, not just for adland, but business as a whole.
User ID not verified.
I agree with Tim – this was excellent marketing. I hadn’t heard of the program before this incident; having been informed of the show I downloaded it on the weekend to watch it. It’s an inspired piece of short-form film-making, and its explicitness is on par with a median episode of Game of Thrones.
User ID not verified.
I am one who is for brave and out of the box advertising and have been critical of typical conservative Australian advertising in the past.
That being said, I’m not offended by the Foxtel ad, it’s daring, but not hugely risky. They went for shock value. They didn’t embrace an out of the box creative idea that was truly creative.
Upsetting the Christian Lobby is always a sure fire way to grab a headline, but surely they could have been a little more creative rather than being simply crass.
It is because of incidents like this that cause marketers to become more cautious, they confuse the back-lash of bad judgement with taking a risk on a big creative idea, thus campaigns like this in turn cause more damage to creativity in Australia.
User ID not verified.
*** The picture does not show anyone having sex with a pig ***
*** This is not an explicit image ***
*** This is not an image of bestiality ***
How hard is this to grasp?
To consider this image to be of bestiality, one has to:
– know what sex is
– know what bestiality is
– consider that an image of a partially clothed man and a pig must inevitably lead to bestiality
Judging by the pearl-clutching comments from Shelly et al, the mind of a Christian is muckier than a sty. Albeit chronically repressed.
Freudenstein has done media a great disservice today. But then he is a Newscorp sheep, so what could one expect.
User ID not verified.
Charlie Brooker at The Guardian, who made the show, must be ecstatic.
User ID not verified.
I’d question the assertion that the Billboard was either brave or clever. The show is brave, the advertising is pretty basic first thought stuff. You could have done so much more with a show like this. The reaction was also pretty standard too and I would suggest is, in itself, the actual marketing coup here.
User ID not verified.
The shot chosen for the billboard is a total spoiler!
Black Mirror is one of the best, most insightful Television productions of the past 10 years. To give away the ending of the debut episode for shock value doesn’t seem brave to me.
User ID not verified.
its a man fucking a pig on a public thoroughfare – it is to brave what a vasectomy is to fun
User ID not verified.
Brave.
Adjective
Ready to face and endure danger or pain; showing courage.
I don’t think it was Brave, no courage shown here, shock and awe is age-old. Personally, most of the time I think it is overused and in this case didn’t demonstrate a creative execution.
Lazy execution.
If you think this is brave – you may also believe that pigs might fly…
User ID not verified.
This is a billboard. And not the campaign.
If the campaign was to have live people sexing pigs all over the city, then yes, it would be a completely inappropriate and crass.
If anything should be taken down, it should be the show itself and not the billboard. After all, it’s only the messenger.
User ID not verified.
This is a billboard. And not the campaign.
If the campaign was to have live people sexing pigs all over the city, then yes, it would be a completely inappropriate and crass.
If anything should be taken down, it should be the show itself and not the billboard. After all, it’s only the messenger.
User ID not verified.
I would suggest the billboard achieved exactly what it was commissioned to do, create discussion and achieve exposure.
User ID not verified.
There’s a difference between brave marketing and pointless shock tactics.
I watched this drama last night and found it to be a mature critique of the consequences and extent of our voyeuristic society. However, using this image and the line ‘Watch the forbidden’ to promote it is a desperate cry for controversy that sells it as nothing more than plain old pornography.
It’s not creative at all, it does a disservice to the product and more importantly the industry. Thanks to these ‘brave’ cowboys, there’s now more momentum to end our self-regulation.
User ID not verified.
@Patrick, glad to see this was ‘excellent marketing’. I think the point of billboard was to get you to watch it on Studio, not download it.
User ID not verified.
Patrick, not sure about Excellent Marketing if you downloaded it, pretty sure the Excellent Marketers wanted you to watch it on Studio….
Agree with Jeremy, they went for the cheap, crass option to get a bit of controversy going. Nothing exciting there. Which is a shame because it sounds like a good show.
User ID not verified.
of course working in advertising and marketing its hard not to be a tad cynical when things like this happen. Not that it needed it, the black mirror series is fantastic in its own right!
User ID not verified.
Brave? How pompous and self-important.
Phoney generated controversy and lazy yes!
The picture does not entice any viewer who would be attracted to the sinister dark wit of the show. Campaign Fail
User ID not verified.