In contemporary society, controversial topics plague our headlines, like a wicked sale at Holt Renfrew attracts fashionistas from every inch of the city. It goes without saying that we, as a general media-hungry public, revel and delight in the shocking issues that plaster their names on every medium imaginable. But is today’s world so ravenous for more splashy headlines that we no longer separate witty advertising from unethical promotions?
Today, shockvertisements— as fabricated by Trendhunter Magazine— have entered a highly contentious territory, that few have walked upon and lived to tell the tale.
Advertising is an industry all unto its own. The competitive world of selling and profiteering is not for the faint of hearted and the public is unquestionably hard to please. With countless factors to consider when promoting a product or service—audience, age, sex, socio-economic background, ethnicity, etc.—the final execution of that intended promotion decides how exactly a company’s product will be received.
I won’t deny that I don’t find a little pleasure in scandal, thirsting for more and anxiously awaiting for the next raunchy ad that’ll get my jaw hitting the floor faster than it will reaching a pair of Louboutins.
However, in a financial point of view, advertising ethics cannot be acknowledged when compared to money, profit, and image. A company’s business depends on its image and selling that reflection to the mainstream market. Companies need to believe that they can rely heavily on guaranteed advertising techniques and strategies to ensure their product can stay as long as it possibly can in the market. Whether it’s a racy ad, or getting Megan Fox to sit in a bathtub taking photos of herself, advertisers seem to want to hit on nerves that strike a nature of intimate and heady reaction.
In the 2007 AIDS Campaign by TBWA Paris, it spurred an immediate reaction from a myriad of people—all different in respects to their status, culture, age, etc.—none of whom came to a general consensus of how to take in this new ad.
In it was a depiction of a man and a woman in two separate parallel images. Each was seen having sexual activities with a spider and a scorpion, respectively. The man is seen as having sex with a scorpion in bed, while the woman is seen receiving oral sex from a spider.
Although graphic in nature, this ad incited various reactions from the public and garnered a lot of publicity to help the cause. The visual interest in the image grabs your attention and doesn’t let you look away from it.

Scandalous or not, Tom Ford, the bad boy genius of the fashion world whose name conjures images of delectable clothing, edgy style, and provocative campaigns, is no stranger to controversy. His ad campaign for his first men’s fragrance showcased his signature style of jaw-dropping disbelief. In the campaign, a bottle of Tom Ford’s fragrance is being held together between two full breasts, while another ad is shown with the bottle held between a woman’s thighs and genitalia.

Is it bold or sexist? With Ford, his campaigns always turn heads and definitely sell more product. Edgier may not always necessarily be good when people start getting sick of seeing the exploitation of a woman’s body as a means to sell a product.
Where’s the creativity or the thought behind the fragrance? As yet another exploitation of women used as a marketing tool in advertising, the portrayal of the woman in the ad allures and appeals—for the most part— to Ford’s target audience of men. The imagination is left to the viewer to conjure up their own interpretations of the ad, but I think Ford’s done a spectacular job of giving us a tagline that tells all: wear his cologne, and you’ll be that bottle.
On a flip side, if Tiger Woods had a tagline, do you think it’d be, “Life is short. Have an affair”? Probably not. But maybe he should’ve consulted with the Ashley Madison Agency based in Toronto about it, before he scored his hole-in-ones.

The site has been the target of much criticism and disgust for its sole objective: to encourage and provide a means for already married couples to commit adultery.
Established in 2001, Ashley Madison started off a white noise in the background of a crowd of sites, but as soon as news stations and reporters got wind of their outrageous ads and commercials, Ashley Madison’s anonymous users increased rapidly, reaching over 2.4 million in 2008.

All these ads and promotional techniques are clearly successful for these companies, as their revenue and profits seem to sky-rocket dramatically, but when do we, as a public acknowledge when an ad has hit that point of no return? When do they, as advertisers, pause to think, “Are we going too far?”
Then again, does “too far” exist in our modern day vocabulary?
Maybe it’s just that the universal advertising strategy is to be as audacious and appalling as possible, so that a company’s racy ad—whatever animal, genital area, or hotel room it may be—gets publicity and attention; because, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Right?