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| But watchdog groups say the Carl's Jr. spot is too hot for TV. |
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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
The burger chain Carl's Jr. may have roused some passions with a recent television spot staring Paris Hilton, a bikini, a Bentley and a bucket of soap, but advertising experts say to expect more such material that gets critics riled, fills e-mail in-boxes and garnishes lots of free air time.
"Controversy is the new black," said Tony Granger, ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi's creative director in New York. "It gets people like us to talk about advertising."
While Granger was not impressed with the Paris Hilton hamburger ad, calling it "low-brow," the people over at West Coast burger chain Carl's Jr. couldn't be more thrilled.
"We've really gotten a ton of coverage out of this," said Andy Puzder, chief executive of CKE Restaurants (Research), Carl's Jr.'s parent company.
Puzder said that while the restaurant spent around $5 million to buy airtime for the Hilton ad in select markets on the West Coast, the amount of publicity generated by television watchdogs crying foul and the resulting airtime on shows like "Entertainment Tonight" and Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" could be worth tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars.
"The difference between being on one of those shows and running an ad on one of those shows is tremendous," he said.
Puzder denied the company created the show just to ride the controversy-generated publicity wave, saying the ad was "designed to catch the attention of young, hungry guys and sell hamburgers," but others aren't convinced.
"They did it just for the reaction," said Barbara Lippert, ad critic for Adweek magazine. "But the reaction was much bigger than they assumed."
Getting a reaction, whether it's shock and outrage, or laughter and curiosity, is nothing new in advertising. But Saatchi & Saatchi's Granger said in the post-TiVo world, where the consumer can tune out commercial images, getting the viewer to seek out ads is an essential part of the game.
He said the host of new commercial messages soon coming through mobile phones will be more entertainment-oriented, similar to how soap operas were created by ad companies to sell soap.
"In the future you will be able to get around advertising," he said, "so we have to get people to want to see advertising, not feel harassed by it."
And what better way to do that than by creating controversy, especially if the company can later take the moral high ground and distance itself from the fray.
"There is a trend of people making advertising they know will never air," said Sue Alessandri, assistant professor at Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications.
Alessandri pointed to a Super Bowl ad from Budweiser that poked fun at Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction" and a Ford (Research) spot featuring a priest lusting after a new car, neither of which aired during the game, but got plenty of playtime on the Internet, as examples.
"They just create these things to get the buzz out there. People know that they can get a lot of mileage with very little money."
And then there's the phenomenon of unauthorized ads making the rounds on the Internet.
Earlier this year, Volkswagen saw a commercial on the Web where a suicide bomber blew himself up in a Volkswagen Polo outside of a cafe. The car remained undamaged, a testament to its supposed strength.
Volkswagen said it had nothing to do with the ad and filed criminal charges against its then-unknown creators. (The company later reached a settlement with the filmmakers.)
A year earlier, Ford ran its own Internet ad featuring a sporty version of a compact car flipping an unwanted pigeon off its hood, the message being the car has sass.
But an unauthorized variation on the same theme quickly began circulating on the Internet, featured a cat climbing onto the car's roof. When the cat sticks its head in the sunroof, the sunroof abruptly closes, decapitating the feline and sending its bloody body flopping to the ground.
Ford said the second commercial was merely a pilot shot by an outside vendor that would never have aired, and launched an investigation into how the footage found its way onto the Web. The company also stressed that it was computer-generated and that no animals were harmed.
But while the companies deny any involvement in either case, there is little doubt that millions of people forwarded those ads to millions more who were eager to watch them.
Advertising biz sees slow start to the year. Click here.
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