You can't win them all

After reading Shayla’s blog post, I could not stop thinking about how different audiences react to different campaigns, commercials and products.

As Shayla pointed out, the cute cuddly mascots behind our favorite childhood cereals have caused a negative link between their product and childhood obesity. While children have grown to love Tony the Tiger, Toucan Sam and Count Chocula, others might see them as a contributing factor towards childhood obesity.

Shayla’s example made be realize that, no matter the company, product or campaign - you can’t win them all.

During the 2011 Super Bowl, Groupon purchased it’s first television ad space to launch it’s campaign, Save the Money. This campaign was themed around idea of saving something endangered. Throughout the evening, Groupon aired three commercials, two of which were quite funny and featured big name celebrities. For example, Elizabeth Hurley’s commercial discussed the negative effects of rapid deforestation in the Brazilian rainforest:  

Not all of their ads went over so well. The most talked about and controversial Groupon ad featured Timothy Hutton, who distastefully discussed the social and political issues in Tibet. 

As PR professionals, it is our job to develop a strategy and implement tactics that will not only achieve our client’s objective, but also cause the least amount of backlash. Winning your target audience over might result in losing another. It is important to remember that in this day and age, media is one of the most power tools we have. Use it wisely!