Super Bowl is over, but some side effects are still going on.
Commercials are hot
issues for most Super Bowls. Lots of corporations want to take advantage of it.
But some companies, unfortunately, heading to the wrong direction.
The Audi
commercial in Super Bowl became one of the most controversial commercials which
drew a stream of outright disgust. Not only because it stands a discussion
about gender inequalities, but also it includes stereotype of fat shaming,
debatable political standpoint, and some other sensitive subjects.
The violent
controversy gives us something to wonder: how fine is the line between using
groundswell appropriately and using groundswell in a totally wrong way? How
many corporations participate in groundswell just because they believe it is the right
thing to do?
It was mentioned
in the book that there are no specific strategies or technologies for reaching the
ultimate objective, which explains why diverse attempts were being tried. We
believe a considerable portion of cooperations are holding the idea that “doing something is better
than doing nothing”. That may be the reason for this commercial coming out: Audi is afraid that their commercial will be overwhelmed by others in Super Bowl. Anyway, negative
attention is better than no attention. So maybe that is what they did for getting
attention, which leads to totally different responses and critical effects.
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Obviously, numerous people felt they were offended by this commercial.
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It leads to the
key point of groundswell: relationship, not the technologies. Audi forgets
to build the effective relationship between their customers. The relationship
between them should be purely buyer-seller, but this
commercial seems to be a missionary and paid less attention to their merchandises. Also, Audi also made a mistake with orientating their customers. The prior survey should be done more precisely to target their potential customers.
No matter this
commercial does with purposes or just a decision mistake, we all have seen the
remarkable power of groundswell. Based on the “POST” method, Audi should
reconsider their customer’s tendencies, find a stronger definition of
objectives and think through their strategies once again. No matter how severe the competition is, excellent enterprise images and long-term society impacts are the top priority. Because Super Bowl is over, but groundswell will always be there.
