Todays Master of Brands Award goes to Burger King UK who chose to start a thread on International Womens Day with the statement women belong in the kitchen a bizarre lead-in to how theyre creating a scholarship program for their female employees to pursue their culinary dreams a statement almost totally bereft of substance that was hooked onto an extremely old and sexist phrase. Naturally when told to delete this by another brand account (KFC gaming) Burger King UK decided to double down which is a KFC dish! Ha! by suggestingthat they should not delete a tweet that brought attention to a lack of female representation in cooking. According to my good buddy Caylen Burger Kings agency is BBH (which stands for Bartle Bogle and Hegarty possibly the oldest and whitest series of names Ive ever heard) who you may remember forturning homeless people into hotspotsat SXSW about 9 years ago (though that was their labs division). Their whole thing is being controversial and it works in the sense that everybody gets pissed off and talks about how much the brand sucks for an entire day. However PR loves to conflate lots of impressions about something bad and/or in poor taste as being successful. Everybody talking about something is not good and does not mean that people now remember your brand fondly. If you go into town wearing a clown outfit and yell Im The Big Pee Pee Man and ram your Dodge Charger into the front of a Piggly Wiggly store blasting Taproots Poem but your car also says WOMENS RIGHTS it may indeed be on the news multiple times but that doesnt mean that youve helped promote Womens Rights. The news is going to remember you as the clown guy and at best the clown guy who yelled he was the big pee pee man. People remember shocking and bad things and tend to not remember context of any kind. Being Shocking Is Not The Same As Being Daring I like to draw the line between being shocking and being daring is when youre attacking a norm versus challenging a bias. The line can be thin as norms are in the process of adjusting but basically if you go out and say something that is sexist or racist that is attacking a norm it is saying something specifically built to offend or hurt with the intention of eliciting a reaction. This isnt the same as challenging peoples assumptions about something calling out biases problems in society and so on its the line between making people uncomfortable because they have to question themselves and uncomfortable because you said something shitty to get them to look at you. That crucial difference is what people tend to miss they see the increase in attention as a way to reach new people without remembering how first impressions only happen once. Even if the person likes you before saying something dumb and offensive even if you end up apologizing for it proves that you care less about the customer and/or whatever thing youve chosen to be nasty about and more about the fact that people are mad.Rob over at BoingBoingmentioned a wonderful term Schrodingers Asshole which refers to specifically says something rude and then gauges whether or not they were bad for saying it based on how upset everyone gets which applies perfectly here. The problem with doing this kind of shock jock form of PR/marketing is its hubris. It acts as if its a deft use of the media controversy building impressions by harnessing how the media (both social and otherwise) loves negative stories without realizing thatthe major story about you is how bad you are. A new challenger in this space are the people taking advantage of the right wing victimhood narrative.The Goya Beansboycott came from their CEOs endorsement of President Trump a guy who had literallycalled hispanics murderers and rapists and seeing the freaks rush to say SIR! I LOVE GOYA BEANS SIR! THANK YOU PRESIDENT TRUMP! has convinced certain brands (and people) that there is a movement against white people and conservative values which theyactuallymean is a movement against people being bigots and marginalizing other people. The temptation here by brands is that there is a wokeness that is policing peoples ability to live and thus its good to challenge these things because people are being too sensitive. Its the age old idea that you can sell things by making them good or sell things by making people think other things are bad basically fueling their like of something based on their own hatred and anger versus their actual values. This workssometimesin politics because politicians are good at coming up with shit to make people mad about but in the case of a brand selling something hate burns out quickly. People who will buy something entirely out of spite for something else dont reallycareabout you or the actual quality of the thing youre selling and as a result your value proposition is as flimsy as the reasoning behind a persons purchase. Sure you get people who buy and use things to appear a certain way and put out a certain image but for the most part that only works when something ispositive.And that rarely comes from a place of controversy when someone wears or uses something to say that they support a cause thats one thing but when someone says theyre boldly being rebellious and standing up to a vicious oppressive force bygiving someone moneythe image of sacrifice and struggle is crushed. While there is an audience of people who are super into people who are assholes (seeTrevor Bauer) building a brand entirely based off of outrage and victimhood isnt a longterm proposition. The size of the audience that is going to be allying with you based on the fact that everyone is mad at you is a lot smaller than you think and their attraction to you is based on their own subset of directionless misery and comes with a heaping helping of capriciousness. They will leave you at any time. They arent really your ally theyre aligned with a vague idea that someone is keeping them from beating the drum of their own biases. Ultimately theres no reason to be controversialin this way.Being controversial by saying something to stand out in your industry is fine my own example being the numerous timesIve said how bad PR people are which I did specifically because I want to make it better but being controversial only to get attention and upset people isbad.Its useless to you. You dont need to do it. This post originally appeared on theWheres Your Ed Atnewsletter.Read more here. The post Not All Good Press Is Good Press appeared first on The Future Buzz. Original source: http://feedproxy.google.com/r/TheFutureBuzz/3/RUNMp-ExFgA/ The post Not All Good Press Is Good Press appeared first on connect social networks. via Connect Social Networks http://connectsocialnetworks.com/not-all-good-press-is-good-press/