“All publicity is good publicity!”

“Well clearly they’ve done something right because it’s got us all taking about them…”

“All this post has done is draw attention to {it} in the first place.”

Whilst there may be truth in some of these sentiments that people churn out in defence of a marketing campaign/stunt that polarises opinion to reveal a host of people who dare to disagree with their particular view, these arguments around the concept of publicity lack a fundamental understanding of sales and marketing at best, and are complete and utter bullshit at worst.

Let’s address them one by one, shall we?

“All publicity is good publicity.”

No. All publicity is… publicity. No adjective warranted. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself why considering all the ‘publicity’ Jimmy Savile is getting in the media right now, no production teams or broadcast studios are lining up to start showing re-runs of Jim’ll Fix It.

Publicity? Yes. Converting to cash? No. Consumers hitting Jim’s people up in the DMs to positively associate with him and potentially have them babysit their kids? Also no.

“Well clearly they’ve done something right because it’s got us all taking about them…”

Again, no. All of my neighbours are currently talking about me, but seeing as the fact is they’re slagging me off for finally losing my sh*t at their incessant mindless gossiping (ironically) in the neighbourhood WhatsApp chat, I’m not going to count on me being invited to anyone’s back garden bbq when the warmer months set in. Nor will an angry sh*t posted through my letterbox do much to affirm my social standing on the street, I feel.

“All this post has done is draw attention to {it} in the first place.”

Yep, okay, this one’s true, because when I posted about the CEO of the dating app who publicly asked copywriters to think up any and all of their b@stard billboard slogans for them in return for them being ‘credited’ if chosen as the best one out of literally hundreds of suggestions given for free, it did indeed put a load of eyes – including new eyes – on the brand. I’ll admit, I’d never fucking heard of them until they devalued the entire industry I work in, but then, shitting on the entire creative collective in your network does tend to draw the eye. But let’s not be convinced that any of this can be spun as a good thing. The whole point of marketing is that it gets the right people to look your way – and by ‘right’ people, we mean the people who are likely to buy. If we had to buy something from a business every time we tossed them a post view or a like on social media, I’m fairly sure we’d all be keeping our fingers a lot more closely to ourselves.

And we’re back to Jimmy Savile. This post is just writing itself now, it really is.

Please, spare me the point about brand awareness. I’m aware of Broadmoor Hospital. It doesn’t mean I want to fucking live there.

Everyone can know about you, everyone can talk about you, everyone can be keeping you ‘relevant’. But if nobody’s fucking buying from you… good luck paying your business loan back with your ‘viral content’.

Ps – in fairness to the brand in question, it’s not them I’m entirely mad at. It’s the copywriters who already know what an arsehole it is to get businesses to take seriously (ie, PAY for) the work that we do and the role that we play, who happily took a break from their posting about dickhead clients, and did a load of work for free for… well.

Own goal on a billboard-sized scale, my friends. Epic.