Why Brands at some point likes Controversy?

If you focus when a brand gets in controversy the audience who are upset for the particular action of brand majorly targets a specific entity. It maybe the brand endorser, manager, celebrity commenting on the controversy etc. but audience would hardly try to point these issue to the Brands itself bcoz, we as human it’s seems much unusual to point at something that is not a person or someone who can’t respond back. This emotional state helps brands in a crucial way as you may say it as the evil nature of marketing.

The misconception you have is that for Brands to win the competition, they have to catch the eyeballs in least possible time as you believe: that the brands believe: that the people have attention span as low as that of a Gold-Fish, It’s wrong. Reality is brands want something so that even if audience don’t pay attention to their product they want people to discuss about their brand for more and more time.


For example: Chick-Fill-A is a popular chicken sandwich company in US, in 2012 it’s CEO Dan T. Cathy made a statement on same-sex marriage which became controversial and was widely discussed on twitter, but bcoz of this controversy a counter protest started in favor of the CEO, which resulted in 12% sales rise for the company. (Forbes Article:- Dear Celebrities, Research Shows That Your Political Opinions hurt your Cause More Than Help it.)


You notice in such controversy sometimes people would be blaming or mocking some CEO or COO or some other element of the Brand/company but during that time the brand is becoming the most discussed topic among people. This helps brand to reach more customers but sometimes when the controversy takes a dangerous side, it may turn out debilitating too sometimes for brands.