Complete rubbish: long running, low budget, high impact

Here's a campaign that has been running for years, yet can still generate headlines.

The 'offender' is the charity Keep Britain Tidy.  This organisation has been going for nearly 60 years and receives government funding for its campaigns to keep litter off the streets of Britain.  Keep Britain Tidy not only promotes its message, but it commissions research to help it understand what causes the problem in the first place.

The campaign targeted young people with sexual innuendo in the headlines
(pictures from the Daily Mail)

Back in 2002 the organisation found that a problem area was younger people: they didn't respond to conventional appeals either in terms of advertising or enforcement.  Keep Britain Tidy decided to target this audience with humour in advertising. A series of posters and beer mats were produced and these were placed in pubs and clubs frequented by young people.

The campaign uses slogans charged with sexual innuendo which gain impact by being combined with often incongruous images.

The low budget campaign is given regular boosts by what I call third party ostensible demarketing.   The creative execution mirrored other media popular with this age group - for example greetings cards with similar 'retro' photography combined with risque slogans.

In 2005 the posters were criticised by academics for being "lazy" and by the Christian Voice group for being "cheap, tacky and horrible".    Four years later they were back in the mainstream media for the same reasons: this time the complainants were the Plain English Society, whose grumbles brought a low key campaign into national prominence in the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail.  These newspapers and campaign groups seem to represent what I call 'taste guardians' in Bradley & Blythe (2013).

Given the careful targeting of the material it is unlikely that the Plain English Campaign's elderly director had encountered the posters herself.  And as the Keep Britain Tidy spokesman commented, they had been around for years.

Despite the outrage and offence that this campaign can generate, I can find no instance of it being referred to the Advertising Standards Authority during its ten year run.


Sources

• WalesOnline (May 20, 2005) Sex sells - 'but we're simply taking it too far', WalesOnline
• Daily Telegraph (Sept 19, 2009), Keep Britain Tidy campaign should 'bin the filth', say campaigners, Daily Telegraph
• Daily Mail (Sept 19, 2009), Litter charity Keep Britain Tidy told to bin its 'filthy' sexual innuendo posters aimed at young people, Daily Mail

UKIP Calypso: Experience Pays

Earlier this week (20 October), former BBC Radio 1 DJ Mike Read released a song titled "UKIP Third Party Ostensible Demarketing'.  What this clumsy term describes is the process where a product's sales are boosted by carefully managing calls to have it banned.

The 'album cover': picture from The Independent

Calypso".  Read said that the song was a harmless piece of fun, something in a long tradition of political satire.  But within hours two things were happening: firstly the song started climbing rapidly in the download charts at iTunes and Amazon; and secondly it was being castigated by media figures and politicians for being racist.  This looks like a classic case of what I call '

Perhaps this is too hard a judgement on Mike Read.  Today (22 October) he is all over the media apologizing if the song has caused offence, and reiterating that it was only a bit of fun. Perhaps: Read had first performed it at the UKIP party conference in October.  Earlier the UKIP leader Nigel Farage had been urging his supporters to buy the song with a view to getting it to Number One in the charts. A contrite Mike Read, though, said he had asked his record company to withdraw the track.

At the time of writing UKIP Calypso was still on sale on iTunes and on Amazon.  It was still available the next day.  So is Mike Read being disingenuous?  He should know better than most about the power of ostensible demarketing.  In 1984 Read as a DJ on BBC Radio 1 was largely responsible for getting an unknown Liverpool band's debut single to Number One.  He had objected to what he regarded as sexually explicit lyrics and refused to play the track.  The band was Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the song, Relax, stayed at Number One for 5 weeks.

Does Mike Read still have the winning touch?  On the basis of the first week, possibly not.  UKIP Calypso entered the charts at number 21, although this position was obtained before the announcement was made that the track was going to be withdrawn.  In the meantime, though, the controversy is keeping the piece in the news.  Provocation can be a powerful selling tool.


*** Update, 27 November.  UKIP Calypso  entered UK charts at number 43.  It had been removed from sale on iTunes some time on 24 November, while Amazon removed the track the following day. ***


Sources

• Official Charts Company, 22/10/2014, UKIP Calypso sits outside Top 20 on midweek Official Chart Update, http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/ukip-calypso-sits-outside-top-20-on-midweek-official-chart-update-3228/
• Grundy, Gareth (11 June 2011), Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Relax 'banned' by the BBC, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jun/11/frankie-hollywood-banned-bbc
• Mason, Rowena (20 October 2014), Get Mike Read’s Ukip calypso song to number one, urges Nigel Farage, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/20/ukip-calypso-song-number-one-nigel-farage-mike-read
• Plunkett, John (22 October 2014), Ukip calypso song should be withdrawn, says repentant Mike Read, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/oct/22/ukip-calypso-song-mike-read-radio-1