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Introduction

Controversial advertising is a type of advertising that is considered as violating or offending the audience because of its violating norms for personal and social values (Lyons, 2006). This type of advertisement is usually displayed through slogans that are blunt, violent, showing nudity or racism to attract attention of the audience by highlighting these issues. This helps to ruin the perception of the audience of the social order of a certain community or country and is much offending. Controversial advertising has grown with time especially in the recent time. The reason for this is the increased awareness as society has turned more complex and therefore advertisement agencies try to break out from the clutter to stand out (Waller 1999). This type of advertisement has once been shown by a famous advertisement agency known as “M&C Saatchi”. The Saatchi Company created a controversial ad for Australia with a slogan that says “So where the bloody hell are you?”

Discussion

All advertisers have a responsibility on their shoulders to not show negative aspects and not to offend the audience, but there are advertisers who are not deterred by such things and continue to show controversial campaigns. One such example is of an Australian advertiser called Danny Ruhlmann who works for the advertising agency “M&C Saatchi”. He created this controversial advertisement as defined above. This “So where the bloody hell are you?” campaign was launched in the year 2006 which cost 180 million dollars. The advocate from brash motto's discuss that the advertisement is trying to target adventurous and educated tourists who frequently visit Australia for different purposes relating to tourism. These are the tourists that do understand the meaning of the advertisement properly which is kind of a play with Australians having a wide view as unpretentious and friendly. This line used in the advertisement has been tested by the Tourism Australia and the national agency of advertisement that is responsible for such slogans on more than 47000 people in seven different countries and the response have turned out to be a positive one. Not only has this, but John Howard, the prime minister of Australia himself has weighed in and claimed that the slogan is instead effective and not offensive.

The advertisement seems to target the appropriate market that was focused and targeted by the advertisement agencies. The advertisement as targeted to the tourists visiting Australia and is successful in showing how tourists ...