Summary:
A woman is suing Toyota Motors after thinking that she was being stalked an harassed by a stranger. In their defense, Toyota said that this was a part of their new marketing campaign to attract customers. The women is suing for 10 million dollars after receiving numerous emails, videos and even being followed which had left her in emotional distress. SFU professor Lindsay Meredith states that as technology continues to advance it makes up for a lot of information. This causes people and companies to be different just to be noticed even if it means being annoying. This method is refered to "shockvertising or "terror marketing" and is being used by companies such as Diesel Clothing, MTV Canada, Boost Mobile and Aylmer pasta sauce. Advertisements went from Diesel showing a women breast feeding a piece of rotten meant to MTV showing a political ad of young adults urinating. Vice-president of development for SDI Marketing, Oliver Gleeson, says that it is good to be different and he likes the idea.However he is still perplexed about how you can have thousands of supporters for your new campaign but one person can change the whole operation.
Connections:
One of the connections I had seen between the article and the textbook was how Toyota was breaking their right to freedom. Although they did have the freedom to run their marketing campaign as they wish, they ended up ruining another person's freedom. They did not know that she would react to their campaign this way and getting sued for 10 million dollars. Another connection that all these companies face is how they were able to target narrow groups of people. This is called niche marketing. Although these companies had bizarre ideas to advertise their products they were able to attract certain groups of people.
Reflection:
In my opinion some of these campaigns were funny, weird and most importantly, different. The Diesel clothing campaigns seemed to bizarre for me to be interested but the MTV advertisements were kind of funny and a clever way to get peoples attention. . I think it is important for companies to be different but there is a line between advertising and invading someones personal space. For example, the lady filing a lawsuit against Toyota Motor Corp. 10 million dollars for emotional damages. That can be a serious issue for "Shockvertising" because it can give companies a bad name and they may lose business in the future.
