Did the mattress
store in San Antonio overuse capitalism with their 9/11 advertisement? The video
was a comical take on the tragedy that happened in 2011 with the Twin Towers.
The video used the event to try and make a profit by using a play on words of
the tragedy.
The
store that shared the advertisement ended up closing due to the upset the
commercial caused to the public. The advertisement did go viral, but not in the
way the company would have liked. The video grow in popularity because of the uproar
that it created with the public. People were horrified by the advertisement. The
attention that the advertisement gained was out of a general upset. This
Walmart display had a similar theme as the advertisement. The display organized
boxes of soda into the form of the Twin Towers with a banner that read “We will
never forget.” This was not a comical approach as the mattress advertisement,
but it does show the over use of capitalism.
This
article felt like the commercial was condemned due to their “tasteless”
approach to advertising. How is bad taste determined? How do we judge this? I
think bad taste is determined by the public. This advertisement was ruled as
bad taste because it was highly offensive to a large number of people. The
timing of this advertisement is also very important. Displaying this aid at the
same time as the anniversary of the tragedy was a mistake. This was a time when
many are grieving. This reminded me to lecture when we discussed when it can be
problematic to schedule posts. Timing of advertisement are very important because
you don’t want them to come across insensitive based on when people read or see
them. The timing was not right, (though
with this specific advertisement I don’t think there was a right time.) because
this was not appropriate for the audience that they received.
Carsyn, your post brings up some interesting points. I totally agree that bad taste is determined by the public. I think that most of the time it is pretty obvious to tell when something is in bad taste, but obviously something slipped through the cracks with this advertisement.
ReplyDeleteGreat job with this Carsyn. I really like how you did research about Walmart and pointed out that they mattress company isnt the only one to try and do somehting with 9/11 before.
ReplyDeleteOur culture is so driven by commercialism and therefore people in marketing are always trying to find something to gain them notoriety. As you brought up, Miracle Mattress made a really poor judgement call in trying to use the tragedy of 9/11 to get business.
ReplyDeleteGreat thoughts! Many of your points I hadn't thought of before.
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