The world of marketing is filled with unique voices and a wide variety of ways to get your message across. This is especially true with pharmacy digital marketing, at least for products and services that can be marketed directly to customers at all.
There are both Advertising Standards Agency and legal guidelines surrounding healthcare products, particularly those that are classified as medicinal.
However, even within these guidelines, as long as a product can be marketed at all there is enough scope for creativity, which creates a dilemma about when or even if it is suitable to use controversial marketing tactics to sell products or raise awareness.
Typically there are three main ways to create controversy; depict a taboo, create something shocking or spark a debate. Most of the time, controversial marketing attempts to do at least one and often two of these.
Depicting a taboo is taking something that is deemed as unacceptable in mainstream society and depicting it, often with the aim of breaching that taboo or saying something about larger society as well as selling a product.
An interesting recent example of this was from the brand Elvie, makers of breast pumps and pelvic floor trainers, both of which have been taboo subjects in recent history in the UK.
Elvie started a campaign known as “Leaks Happen” about incontinence that started with a now-banned video on the platform TikTok before extending to an interactive billboard that raised awareness and attempted to break a stigma.
Shocking an audience is increasingly difficult as so many marketing experts attempt to create imagery that will affect an audience, but one of the most controversial examples was the Get Unhooked Campaign by the Department of Health, showing people with fish hooks through their mouths.
It is one of the most complained about adverts in British television history, but given the stark importance of its message was also very effective.
Finally, and most commonly these days, debate controversy is about creating a conversation, often about a shocking or taboo subject, but sometimes can be about challenging stereotypes or societal expectations.
One of the best examples of this was the “Like A Girl” campaign from the feminine hygiene product brand Always. It was based on the simple premise; when asked to do something “like a girl”, adults acted on sexist stereotypes but children did not, doing actions with confidence.
It was simple but highly effective, not only at creating brand awareness but changing perspectives and reversing harmful stereotypes.