Intentional bad buzz: when brands ride negative buzz

We very often talk about bad buzz, or negative buzz: buzz that harms a brand’s reputation and triggers crises. Some brands ride this concept in an attempt to turn it to their advantage. This is what we can call intentional bad buzz, or bad buzz marketing. In short, a fake bad buzz staged by brands to generate viral awareness. A quick tour of the most striking recent cases of intentional bad buzz.

From bad buzz to intentional bad buzz

“It takes twenty years to build a reputation. Five minutes to ruin it.” This quote from the American billionaire and philanthropist Warren Buffett perfectly illustrates bad buzz on the internet.

Bad buzz is when the media noise turns negative and dangerous for the brand, the service, the product, the event or the personality. With the weight of social media, bad buzz most often generates:

• a communication crisis (a blunder, a misunderstanding),
• a structural crisis (a product or service being discredited),
• or even an emotional crisis (affective, ethical, moral).

In response, brands can choose between:

• saying nothing (but this will accentuate the spread, increase the potential for rumors, interpretations, etc.),
• deleting the content (but this is most often interpreted as an admission),
• or reacting (refuting the statements, the rumor, the facts with tangible arguments; playing the victim and arousing the public’s empathy; acknowledging the mistake, making amends and repairing it).

Faced with the media hubbub, some brands have decided to deliberately provoke bad buzz. Not only to get people talking about them, but also to better control their online reputation. “You’re never better served than by yourself,” as the saying goes!

Intentional bad buzz: when “the mini-scandal” pays off

For startups short on awareness, mini-scandals have become a good way to become known quickly and cheaply, thanks to “sexist, ageist and vulgar” advertising. Take the example of the company Ecovoiturage(2), which released a deliberately sexist advertising campaign to shock internet users.

After two days of bad buzz on Twitter and Facebook, the company simply apologized for its “tasteless” ad.

Please accept our apologies for this tasteless campaign in which mockery allowed us to point out certain facts [1]

— Eco-voiturage (@EcoVoiturageFR) June 24, 2014

Bad buzz marketing: when “sin” pays off!

A company can also create bad buzz by playing on a society’s values. This is the case with Honey Maid(3), an American snack brand. Its campaign celebrated the family in the modern sense of the term: heterosexual, same-sex-parented, interracial. And at the end of its ad, the slogan “This is wholesome.” A term obviously used as much to talk about the biscuits as about the families.

The result: a letter from an ultra-conservative association denouncing this advertisement, which it accused of “trivializing sin.” Honey Maid responded with a clip, viewed more than 4 million times on YouTube, that generated even more sympathy than expected.

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Intentional bad buzz: when “sexism” pays off

More and more companies are using the sexist register to communicate and trigger digital reactions in large numbers. Take the example of Numéricable(4), with a provocative visual comparing the speed of the operator’s high-speed fiber to how quickly women change their minds.

Faced with the outcry on social media, Numéricable hurried to hit back with another slogan and visual to provide a sexist counterweight: “Download as fast as your husband forgets his promises.” In the end, the operator will have grown its visibility.

Bad buzz marketing: when “irresponsibility” pays off

How far will companies go to create buzz, good or bad? During the last World Cup, the betting site Paddy Power(5) posted photos of the Amazon rainforest, where trees had been cut down to form a phrase encouraging the England team.

Indignant tweets came in from all over the world. And at the peak of the tweets, Paddy Power announced that it was a fake on behalf of Greenpeace, with this new message: “Everyone went crazy while every 90 minutes an area of 122 football pitches is cut down, without anyone caring.”

Bad buzz marketing: when “seriousness” pays off

To launch its intentional bad buzz, the famous brand Carambar went as far as calling its own values into question. Known for the short jokes printed on the back of its wrappers, it caused a real outcry by first announcing the end of its absurd puns and improbable wordplay. In their place: educational games and cultural riddles.

Many media outlets picked up this news. To express its hostility to this decision, the town hall of Marcq-en-Barœul, the brand’s historic birthplace, even issued a statement to the AFP. “This afternoon, we set up a petition on our Facebook page inviting internet users to mobilize against the abandonment of this joke, which for us is part of Carambar’s genetic heritage.”

In the end, Carambar announced on its website that it would keep printing its jokes on its candy wrappers. Ultimately, the brand benefited from the support of many internet users on social media, who expressed their attachment to the product through numerous petitions calling for the jokes to be kept.

The lessons from these intentional bad buzz cases

These intentional bad buzz cases follow the same methodology, which consists first in arousing indignation over sensitive themes such as feminism, environmentalism, justice, equality, nostalgia. Then, in fueling the fire by driving more engagement on social media. Finally, in getting messages across, in promoting a product, backed by an endorsement (an institution, a brand value, etc.).

“Lo importante es que hablen de ti, aunque sea bien (the important thing is that people talk about you, especially in a good way).” This sentence from Salvador Dalí sums up the goal of the intentional bad buzz launched by brands. “Since 2013, there have been 1.3 bad buzz cases per week,” says Nicolas Vanderbiest(1). A real communication phenomenon that reveals the “disruptive” influence of social media!

From intentional bad buzz to real bad buzz?

In an ironic twist, these fake bad buzz cases could turn into real bad buzz. Because the temptation for the brand to raise the stakes in order to arouse public indignation and secure its promotion can lead to a backlash from internet users. Will they keep falling into the traps?

Sources:

1. Nicolas Vanderbiest: Crisis management of companies’ online reputation

2. Ecovoiturage drives into sexist and vulgar bad buzz, then apologizes. Easy!

3. Honey Maid Had A Beautiful Response To The Hateful Comments On Its Pro-LGBT Ad

4. Numericable: the sexist fiber ad, the first bad buzz of 2014

5. Paddy Power and the cut-down trees ad: riding bad buzz, a very risky PR move

6. La Redoute bounces back on the naked man buzz: a strange and above all risky video