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How Controversy Is Good For Business

Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes

I was checking out the Live News Feed on my Facebook account when I saw a post by Guy Kawasaki with the title ‘Dating site axes 5,000 members for gaining weight‘.  Of course this got my attention and before I knew it, the dating site beautifulpeople.com was on my radar.  It was newsworthy and interesting enough that later that same day, I made it a topic of conversation with my fiance.  This was a brilliant marketing stunt because it accomplished a few big things.  First off, it grabbed headlines. When a press release says that 5,000 people are kicked off a website for being fat it immediately becomes a link everyone wants to click on to read more.  Second, because of all the new awareness of beautifulpeople.com I’m almost certain there was a surge in new members.  Single people will be interested in submitting their own image and creating an associated profile to receive validation about their own looks in addition to meeting single beautiful people.  Third, the press release created the conversation that is considered the Holy Grail of buzz marketing, ‘The Water Cooler’ conversation.  Employees at offices everywhere will be talking about the dating website that only allows beautiful people and about the curiosity of what the singles allowed to remain on the site must look like. This is about controversy. According to the Free Dictionary, the definition of a controversy is a ‘dispute between sides holding opposing views’.  Controversy creates intense conversation, discussion, and curiousity.  Often if a product is in the mix of the controversy it will see its sales skyrocket because people want to see what the controversy is all about to formulate their own opinion.

History has taught us that controversy also increases business. Remember the 2004 movie that Mel Gibson directed called “The Passion of the Christ”.  There was so much controversy surrounding the supposed anti-Semitism in the movie that no Hollywood movie studio would finance it and no distribution company would agree to distribute it. Undeterred, Mel Gibson decided to finance the movie himself for $30 million and created a new distribution company to handle distribution. All the controversy and ensuing press created a growing buzz which resulted in the movie becoming the highest grossing non-English language film ever made.  The film was a enormous success and went on to earn 611 million dollars at the worldwide box office.

Controversy can be created to bring public awareness to a wrong that may need to be righted.  For example, a few months ago, there was a undercover video filmed at a chicken hatchery showing cute little chickies being sent into a disintegrator seconds after they were born.  It brought attention to the plight of male chicks who were being killed in order to make room for the egg producing female chicks. This tugged at the heart strings of people (me included) and brought lots of attention and discussion about the way hatcheries operate and the choices we make as consumers.  The story was being retweeted thousands of times, was viewed almost 2 million times on YouTube, and people like myself were sending out emails to family and friends about the plight of these poor chicks along with a link to the video.

Think about how you can leverage controversy in your own business. Your business does not have to be directly involved in the controversy itself, but can still be a benefactor.  Often you can pluck controversial headlines from the news and use them to draw attention to your products or services.