In my previous blog post, I listed the top 10 marketing highlights from 2015. In it, I (among other things) congratulate a brand -- Big Ass Fans -- that very cleverly poked fun at Kim Kardashian and her.... um.... well, let's leave it at that. Hoping that it might be an interesting post for business owners interested in marketing their business, I decided to post it on Facebook and boost the post with some advertising dollars. The image that I assigned to the Facebook post (shown above) was of her bare back (only!). According to Facebook's advertising guidelines, that was too much skin. I chose the image because my Facebook post described the blog post as "A look back at the marketing topics that are important...", and Kim Kardashian is looking back at the camera. See what I did there? Alas, the ad wasn't approved, and I had to change the Facebook post image to something far less clever.

It got me thinking, though, of the difference between Facebook and print media when it comes to marketing and advertising. On one hand you have Facebook who earned $16 billion in advertising revenue in 2015. On the other hand you have traditional print media (including magazines), who are suffering unprecedented declines in advertising revenue. This gives Facebook the flexibility and authority it needs to insist that advertising be done the proper way. This makes print media desperate for whatever ad revenue it can scrape together. Case in point: the Kim Kardashian image I am referring to is from a recent edition of Paper magazine who, as I'm sure you know, resorted to sexism for their cover photo and to full frontal nudity on the pages inside. It was clearly a desperate move to boost circulation, which would presumably attract advertisers.

Four thoughts on the matter:

1. Shame on you, Paper magazine. Desperation does not become you.
2. Shame on you, Kim Kardashian, but that's a given, isn't it?
3. Facebook, love 'em or hate 'em, has created an advertising channel that is the most efficient and effective channel I can think of, with the possible exception of Google Adwords. They rule advertising, for good reason, and we should be happy to have the opportunity to use it to our advantage. Sure, we need to follow their rules, but at least they have boundaries... and morals (well, some at least).
4. It makes me sad when brands resort to desperate measures to grasp at revenue they don't deserve. Evolve. Create something valuable to people, not cheaply sensational.

LESSON FOR MARKETERS

1. If you're not advertising on social media, you should. At least experiment with it.
2. Ignore the trends in your industry at your peril. Paper magazine should have evolved. Black's Photography suffered a similar fate.

YOUR TURN

Am I too much of a Facebook apologist? Am I overly critical of print?    

Did no one look at this and question the graphic treatment of the name of the restaurant?  Or maybe they did tit.... oops - typo... IT on purpose to attract a certain, um, segment of the population?

LESSON FOR MARKETERS

I have always encouraged clients to show new marketing materials (or digital marketing assets) to anyone - even friends and family - just to make sure nothing stands out in a detrimental or embarrassing way.  It costs nothing and you never know what you missed!

YOUR TURN

Did you see it right away?  Or am I the one with the dirty mind?