Last weekend I took my kids to see the marble replica of Michaelangelo’s “Pieta” at the St. Paul Cathedral. Of course I wanted them to be impressed young culture fanatics which would publicly make me look like Dad-Of-The-Awesome. While “impressed” with the feat of the Italian artist, nothing was as impressive to my son as the echo even the smallest of sound would make in the vast chamber of the Cathedral dome. He would make the smallest of “pop” sound with his mouth, only to hear it reverberate for what seemed like an endless amount of time.
Something tells me this may be the same experience R.F. Moeller jewelers is feeling this morning. I won’t go into great detail here, but suffice it to say that a very controversial ad appeared in City Pages this week where a man with a gun to his head is lamenting his decision to have purchased a diamond somewhere other than R.F. Moeller. This post is not to engage in a moral dialogue about the ad’s creative, rather to outline how even the smallest of sound in advertising — a quarter page ad in a city newspaper — can reverberate throughout, frankly, the world.
A quick DNA of yesterday’s events. The ad appears and immediately those who are offended begin to cascade upon the R.F. Moeller Facebook page to express themselves. In a bit of a sideshow, a friend of mine snaps a photo of the ad and tweets about it to his followers. I “retweet” his post, also expressing my outrage. The digital editor at AdWeek.com, who follows me on Twitter, decides to showcase the ad in his daily “AdFreak” site, a site extolling the non-virtuous of the advertising world. The ad writer apologizes to a local journalist. The local news covers it. And, as of today, the story continues.
I’m not sure how R.F. Moeller is taking all of this. As the old adage goes, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” Eh, yeah, don’t buy that, but that’s not what this post is about either.
Every ad, every marketing claim, every promotion now exists in an ever-connected echo chamber where it lives, breaths, is shared and interpreted over and over ad nauseum. The Moeller case study is not about a City Pages ad. No, it’s a story about never underestimating the power of the social echo chamber. A single ad can become a story can become a phenomenon. As a marketer, this excites me. As a brand, it should too. But without proper planning or expectation-setting, it can be a nightmare.
R.F. Moeller claims it did not see or approve of the ad prior to it being published. Something tells me that will never happen again.
