Dove banner ad that shows it pays to be vigilant

There’s been considerable press interest of late in ‘complacent’ banner ad placement. The main focus of media and public ire has been the serving up of banners on tasteless pages on Facebook that promote domestic abuse. But as has been widely acknowledged, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The steps being proposed to tackle this focus on dealing with the content itself. Culture Secretary Maria Miller recently met with the UK’s internet service providers to find a way of blocking offensive, indecent and illegal pages. Not only would this protect society but would also go some way to sparing brands the problem of seeing their banner ads featuring on content that causes public outrage.

Dove Men+Care + grim news story = inadvertent offence
So, what can companies do when the tables are turned and their marketing messages take on a whole new unpalatable tone when placed into an unfortunate context?
Consider the following banner I saw yesterday sitting atop one of the day’s more grim stories.

Anyone who knows about the Moors murders couldn’t help but draw the unfortunately coincidental, but nonetheless disturbing connection between the two. How did this happen? Did no one stop to think that an invitation to ‘Tap to see the torture’ would be seen in isolation of news content? The news is replete with regular stories on Guantanamo Bay, the daily atrocities occurring in Syria and across the Middle East and the grisly narco gang wars in Latin America. I’m sure Dove in no way intended to cause offense, yet such carelessness can still cost companies big.

This is certainly a cautionary tale for marketers but is it a problem that can be remedied easily? I’m not an expert but I assume it’s in part a case of scrutinising the meta-data to ensure your marketing messages don’t take on an unfortunate new meaning when placed alongside online content.

Or is there anything else that can be done?

By Tristan Garrick, Head of PR & Content for the DMA