Julian Morrow of the Chaser outlines a new 'secondary audience' phenomenon in his talk at the 2009 Andrew Olle Media Lecture (http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2009/11/07/2735643.htm). He outlines the primary audiences reactions and secondary audience's reactions to satirical and controversial materials which have surfaced. Basically the primary audience refers to those who directly watch a specific piece of material and form judgment on it whether it be positive or negative. Then comes the secondary audience who hear about this piece of controversial material with the already held preconception that it is a negative piece of work (ie blown up by the media or negative word of mouth - which is more common than positive) and then go out of their way to view it ie. Youtube - and inevitably base a negative judgment on that and make a complaint. His main concern is erosion of free speech in the media due to the fear of offending the secondary audience or the non-intended audience)
After watching his speech it made me think of how marketing is directly linked to these types of new age issues. Indeed new media is a great way to get information across to a large proportion of people if its deemed appropriate to the masses, but what happens when it offends the non-intended purpose? For years great ad campaigns have stuck to those it matters to and offended others and its the way it has been for a long time.
The best and most extreme examples of this scenario is an ad by KFC a few months back showing a white Australian man in the middle of a West Indies section of a cricket game sharing a bucket of KFC chicken. The West Indies fans were rowdy until he offered them all a piece of KFC chicken. The intended purpose of that ad was to outline the 'crowd pleasing' nature of KFC chicken. However once this commercial was seen by Americans on Youtube and with the help of a Youtube 'news' show TheYoungTurks, they accused Australia about being racist and stereotyping black people and fried chicken.
As Australians, we know that was definitely not what the ad was trying to do. Firstly they were West Indies fans not black Americans and secondly, that type of stereotype doesn't even exist here. But at the end of the day KFC pulled the ad and made a public apology. Some argued that KFC as a US parent company has the responsibility to take these things into consideration and even though those stereotypes don't exist here in Australia.
With social media connecting more and more people together and word of mouth spreading like wild-fire, will this mean the demise of good quality ads? Will marketers have to become more sensitive towards the secondary audience, the non-intended audience and in effect dumb down their ads to keep everyone happy?
I'd like to hear your thoughts.
They should be called the young turkeys. What a bunch of knobs! IT had nothing to do with the people being black, it had to do with the fact that the Aussies were playing the Windies at the time! KFC - not referred to as Kentucky Fried Chicken here in Australia, has poured million$ into cricket, it was just an unfortunate coincidence...
ReplyDelete