Defend Goal Line with Provocative Offensive

Your goal is to maximize profitability. Might it ever happen that provoking consumers in potentially offensive ways could help you attain your goal? Certainly. Do remember to pass it off by attending to community norms and by using humor.
     “Community” refers to the culture as much as to the geographical location. Multinational retailer IKEA, for example, interacts with many cultural communities. At least a few in the U.S. have found offense in a new tactic, called Mänland, being used by an IKEA location in Australia.
     Mänland is a section in the store containing video games, a pinball machine, a foosball table, and free hot dogs, all designed to keep men occupied while the women in their lives shop. The woman is expected to escort her fellow to Mänland, where she’s issued a buzzer which sounds after thirty minutes as a reminder to come fetch him. The same system used with Småland, the IKEA nursery area for children.
     This treating men like children appears to be behind the offense being taken in some quarters.
     An example from last year is the Britax use of naked women in posters retailers could use in displays featuring the manufacturer’s baby strollers and bassinets. The objective announced by Britax was to show how their baby holders are designed to duplicate the loving hugs by a mother of her child.
     Here the culture can have to do with the communication medium. Does nudity which provokes attention on TV or YouTube cross over the line to blatant offensiveness when those images are shown in a store? The erotic images in Calvin Klein advertising shocked lots of people. Retailers might decide that such ads are fine in magazines—shocking lots of people means consumers are noticing the brand—but those retailers might decide not to have the images on their store walls.
     What if your store is in Saudi Arabia, where female mannequins must never show the heads, arms, or bodily curves? Does it seem clear that posters showing naked women would be considered highly offensive? And back to Australia: Research from Griffith University, University of Canterbury (New Zealand), and University of Queensland indicates that Australian women are more likely to take socially responsible actions—such as ensuring that their infant is in a proper stroller—when ads and signage feature mildly erotic imagery.
     But would your shoppers consider the Britax ads to be even mildly erotic?

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