# Advertising Complaints – one man's poison…

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2008/12/04/advertising-complaints-one-man039s-poison/
- Published: 2008-12-04T13:57:43+00:00
- Author: Kevin Baughen

Like many others, I saw my first glimpse of the [Barnado’s](http://www.barnardos.org.uk)
Christmas TV and viral adverts last week.  Pretty hard-hitting, some would say shock,
tactics employed throughout but it is a serious message after all.

I’m not surprised to learn that around 400 complaints have been received by the 
Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).  We live in a country of approaching 60 million
people and unless all communications, all of the time, are so bland so as to offend
no-one, marketers will always generate complaints. 

## Advertisement

 [⌊Posthub advert. You create the campaign. We'll handle the postal journey. Get started at post-hub.co.uk.⌉](https://fundraising.co.uk/ads/posthub-20261007-300x250/)

Creating that ‘stir’ is vital if your activities are to ever gain any cut-through
in our media-saturated world.  I am willing to bet that the campaign generates far
more responses, donations and offers of support than it will complaints – so does
this prove the point?

When I was a jobbing marketer I had a particularly driven Director who actually 
formalised this kind of controversy into my objectives.  His view was that if we
didn’t receive at least one ASA complaint every year, we clearly weren’t trying 
hard enough to generate the ‘buzz’ around the products in question.

As a diligent employee I proceeded to push as far as possible utilising the range
of communications media at my disposal and ‘successfully’ racked up three complaints
during the next two years.  The one which was upheld incorporated a realistic X-
ray, complete with brown envelope and handwritten Post-it note which was distributed
as a magazine and press insert. 

The **one** complaint it received and which was enough to have it withdrawn was 
from a lady who was expecting some medical results and thought these might be hers.
Why she thought her results would be inside her copy of The Sunday Times is still
a mystery to me but she was unhappy none-the-less.

Incidentally, when I questioned the ASA, I was told conversationally that it was
time my employer got caught for something.  Apparently this is a healthy thing for
marketers and advertisers, periodically.

The upshot was one of the most successful awareness and ROI campaigns we ever managed,
so one person’s poison didn’t seem to be everyone’s in this instance.

Kevin Baughen is founder of [Bottom Line Ideas](http://www.bottomlineideas.com),
is a speaker for [Cancer Research UK](http://www.cancerresearchuk.org) and a long-
time advocate of blurring the lines between best practice across the charity and
commercial worlds.