The art of creating a trash ad
- Vladislav Kasyanenko
- Nov 5, 2020
- 3 min read
First of all, let’s define what trash marketing actually is. The obvious association doesn’t seem nice, does it? Well, in our case trash doesn’t mean garbage – in our case, trash stands for anything that doesn’t fit into the “common framework”. Trash genre can be noticed in almost every industry, like Nickelback in music, movie 43 in cinematography, Mass Effect Andromeda in the game industry (hah). In marketing, trash is an irony about real marketing and about its rules. It combines images and things that are more like anti-advertising but allows you to stand out and attract attention. This is a style to differentiate from the crowd that doesn’t need you to follow any specific guidelines – the only thing you need is to be creative. These creative campaigns are usually provocative and controversial. Check out the examples below.
However, that is just the tip of the iceberg – the format that we are really used to. Most of these examples are high budget parodies from big brands. The real art starts when we get to something smaller – something that doesn’t have a big budget. There are two main strategies here – artificial hype and word of mouth. These two approaches are really old.
For example, once upon a time at the beginning of the 20th century, a Russian industrialist Nikolai Leontievich Shustov used the approach of artificial hype. He hired students who went to the public houses and started to demand "Shustov's" cognac from the bartenders. When they didn't get what they wanted, they would start a row with the owner of the place, which sometimes leads to a fight. Thus, soon the whole of Moscow found out about the existence of this drink. Quite simple, quite smart and very aesthetic, however, it needs a well-planned strategy.
What about word of mouth though? Well, this one is more complicated – needs to be very well-planned. The complexity of this approach is that the provocation has to be perceived as an unusual event, a surprise that would shock the audience for a long time so that they wouldn’t forget of it right away and even more – that they would want, to tell everyone about the event. This provokes the transfer of the necessary information-through conversations, gossip and rumours.
That way, one quiet, unremarkable city had the same modest shop, in which there was a sluggish trade in various dishes. Rare customers would bring him a very small profit. One day the owner came up with the idea to change the situation by applying a very unusual move and implement an event codenamed "Elephant in the China shop"! Do you feel where it's going? He rented an elephant, sent it to the store and left it alone. The event quickly received a lively response from local Newspapers and radio stations. They mentioned the name of the store and some of the items that had been carelessly smashed by the clumsy elephant. After that, the owner of the store placed a number of notes in the newspapers, which talked about updating the range after the "elephant" pogrom. After assuring people that the effects of the elephant's journey were eliminated, he invited people to look at the updated store and make purchases. The elephant helped the store owner to very quickly drive awareness of his business and to obviously increase its profit and the number of customers.
The objective is always about awareness by means of a provocation that is impossible to miss. This is exactly the situation when some might say that black PR is also good – for example, the infamous Pepsi commercial with Kendal Jenny. Of course, it wasn’t intended to be what it turned out to be at the end, but it actually worked as a perfect provocation.
However, that is exactly why you need a clear understanding of what is acceptable within a particular society (or country) and what is not. You can't allow to make it to strong because usually, you will be walking on very thin ice. At the same time, it is necessary to clearly catch when the event becomes normal. For example, once advertising half-naked bodies caused something approaching shock, but today it is almost commonplace. Of course, it is also important to take into account local law regulations.
The main thing, however, is to clearly outline your objectives and to come up with tools to measure it as well is to plan it as detailed as possible.
If you want a part two with an in-depth look into the methods, like the article. The art of creating a trash ad.
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