The No-L-ita Ad Campaign: Will Shock Sell?
I have long been fascinated by what motivates people in terms of health issues. I, like so many others, have friends or family who struggle with Type 2 diabetes, obesity and smoking addictions. So, with my marketing brain on overdrive, I tend to take note of any new approach or ad campaign that might inspire change for the broader populations that deal with the same concerns. It was with that in mind that I considered the newly launched, and already much-discussed, No-L-ita jeans, “No. Anorexia.” campaign (created by Oliviero Toscani). Note: the images are hard to see, so be ready if you decide to check out the site.
As reported by Rosamaria Mancini (with contributions from Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan and Christina Passariello) in the Wall Street Journal (reg. required), the Flash&Partners Group (Tombolo, Italy) brand is using images of a 27-year old, emaciated, nude woman for the effort. The images are indeed shocking and controversial, but there may be something more to it.
I dug back into my copy of Robin Hood Marketing by Katya Andresen to see how she described the steps taken in developing the American Legacy Foundation’s anti-smoking campaign for youth (truth). Andresen describes how to connect causes to values of the audience rather than the needs of the organization. In that case, the teenagers were more likely to respond to a campaign about where they could act on their values (to protest against big tobacco companies that were manipulating them) than they were to care one bit about the Foundation’s grander interest in preventing them from smoking. Same end, with different means, strikes again.
If a cause marketer is more likely to achieve a step in the right direction (toward their end goal) by appealing to the audience based on their values, perhaps the No-L-ita campaign, though shocking to a lot of people outside the core audience, will actually be effective for the very specific group of young women it targets. I will be interested in the follow-up on this. (I realize that No-L-ita may well see traditional sales-increase results from the “No. Anorexia.” effort, but wanted to isolate the cause aspect here.)
I am still mulling it all over, and hope to explore this No-L-ita approach further in the near future in an interview with Katya Andresen (I’ll keep you posted). In the meantime, I’ll be taking the words of someone who should know, as quoted in the WSJ article, under consideration:
“Diane von Furstenberg, president of the Council of Fashion Designers of
America, who spearheaded the discussion in the U.S. about the issue of
ultrathin models, saw the ad featured on a TV news segment in Paris,
where she is planning for her fall 2008 collection. ‘It’s a horrible
picture, but I think it may be very good in the end,’ she said”
September 27th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
As both someone who has suffered with anorexia as a teenager (more years ago than I care to mention) and a professional in the branding field, my engagement with this campaign is, needless to say, intense. First, I’ll comment as an ex-anorectic (if one is ever considered “ex” which is a whole other conversation. I agree with you on the strategic wisdom of leveraging the target’s anger towards an obvious source– in this case the fashion industry– in order to persuade. The problem is with the execution. It’s as if someone had a great idea and simply couldn’t WAIT to get it on paper, got so swept away with the shock value, that they simply forgot to convey the message. If you are going to steer the target’s anger towards the fashion industry, well, you have to do both more obviously and with more finesse. I can barely decode the message. What are they saying, exactly? I’m pretty sure the message that the fashion industry is at least partially to blame for stimulating the disease is simply not made. The argument is not clear. In short, I don’t get it. And if I don’t get it I’m pretty sure it will go right over the head of the target. They get it’s a gross image. But not the message of blame. And therefore the intention of focusing anger in a productive direction is lost.
September 28th, 2007 at 9:00 am
Thanks for the insight, Julie. It IS so easy to look at campaigns with a sort of quick hit/design/image perspective and not actually evaluate an effort with the mind of the targeted audience in mind. This brand has already gotten a lot of coverage due to the campaign, but will it make a difference for women suffering from anorexia in some way? Another reason why I hope to also speak with Katya Andresen about the approach sometime soon. Thanks, again, for taking time to share your view.
September 28th, 2007 at 10:34 am
I didn’t have time to load all of the site’s Flash pages to get a more complete story - but I think what does work well about the very shocking image of an obviously unhealthy woman (who seems to be standing in for the whole industry) is that is shows something REAL. Sometimes people need a jolt to understand the real, and very unpleasant, flip side behind image-building that is not so real.
Milton Glaser wrote a great article a while back called “The Road to Hell” about how bending the truth can be a slippery slope for graphic designers. Of course the same thing applies to advertising (or any mode of communication). The ad is very hard to look at, but maybe people need to get that. It would have been a good reality check for my high school friends and I to see an ad like that back in the days when we were sure that our lives would be improved if only we were thinner and prettier like the artificial airbrushed images that filled magazines. Back then, lots of people thought the anorexic and bulimic girls looked good - until they ended up in the hospital.
Hopefully, the campaign doesn’t start and end with only a shock-value level of communication, but deepens the story to build a truly meaningful message and create action. As Julie mentions about the execution… there is certainly a lot more to be done.
October 2nd, 2007 at 3:58 am
Will shock sell?
It does most of the time, doesn’t it? It jolts people into seeing what may or what is already happening. However, shock wears out in time. Sometimes, people get so used to seeing things in a certain way that they begin to accept it as the truth.
I just hope we don’t get used to seeing women with ultra ultra thin bodies like the model on the Web site…