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”
