Monday 14 November 2011

Media product controversy... a marketing technique?

I'm bored and I have the urge to write something, and it was either go on a massive rant about mainstream popular music or something or do a write-up of something that's (somewhat) relevant to Media Studies. I chose the latter...

Here I'm going to look at some controversial media products and how the controversy has helped sell them.

This ultimately applies in all different forms of media, one of which being the videogame industry. If we look at Activision's "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" we can see that one of the first public trailers featured a scene which involved civilians being killed in an airport; there is a strong possibility this was to intentionally cause controversy as public controversy leads to free features in the press as well as the product becoming a general talking point. This carries on to hype the product to people of the general target market.

This also happens in television - some TV shows which frequently draw controversy end up having a "cool" appeal to their target audience, such as the reputation The Simpsons had originally when it started. Controversy can also come across as deliberate in British soaps like Eastenders, where controversial storylines (such as the baby story last year) are teased before they are shown - this gives the Daily Mail and similar sources plenty of time to cause mass hysteria about how disgraceful it is - which again, builds up hype.

- HM

No comments:

Post a Comment