Commentary: permissive marketing – the effects of the AIDS crisis on marketing practices and messages
| Published date | 01 December 1995 |
| Date | 01 December 1995 |
| Pages | 34-48 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/10610429510103935 |
| Author | Aubrey Wilson,Christopher West |
| Subject Matter | Marketing |
34 JOURNAL OF PRODUCT & BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 4 NO. 5 1995 pp. 34-48 MCB UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1061-0421
Introduction
In 1981, in a Harvard Business Review feature, we described a marketing
condition which we called “unmentionability” and, through a series of case
studies, showed how it could frustrate the marketing of a wide range of
products and services, despite the fact that many of them need to be actively
marketed. AIDS and the massive anti-AIDS promotional campaigns that it
spawned have dramatically accelerated the pace of change and created a new
environment in which products, services, concepts and ideas that were
previously regarded as unmentionable can now be marketed openly and
explicitly. The marketing climate has changed profoundly and, although not
always for the better, the added freedom and punch that the AIDS campaigns
have engendered in the marketing world have been eagerly accepted by
those who feel they can enhance their marketing programs.
The article was originally published in 1992 but the intervening years have
shown, if anything, that marketing “messages” have become even less
restrained, although there is some evidence that the public is reacting against
extremes. The revulsion at advertisements used by Benetton showing a new
born baby and Friends of the Earth illustrating a factory overflowing with
blood led to their subsequent withdrawal and it may indicate there are, at
least for some people, limits beyond which marketing messages should not
go. Nevertheless, the thesis originally propounded that the AIDS crisis has
pushed back the boundaries of what is acceptable in marketing – until they
are virtually non-existent remains – wholly valid.
Background
The death of a gay French Canadian airline steward in March 1984 was
hardly headline news, particularly in the marketing press, but in the latter
years of his life his actions triggered one of the profoundest and speediest
changes in the marketing environment observed this century. He achieved
this by “importing” the AIDS virus from France into the USA, where a
hyperactive gay community converted an outbreak of a disease into a
worldwide plague.
The connection between the subsequent AIDS crisis and marketing is far
from obvious but it has now become clear that the promotional and
information programs mounted in an attempt to stem the progress of the
disease have profoundly altered public perception of what is acceptable in
terms of subject-matter, language and images. Drastic problems demand
drastic action, but when widescale marketing programs are used the impact
cannot be confined to the precise arenas in which they are implemented.
Commentary: permissive
marketing – the effects of the
AIDS crisis on marketing
practices and messages
Aubrey Wilson and Christopher West
This article was first published in Business Strategy Review, Summer 1992.
Marketing messages
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