Swatch. Calvin Klein. The Royal Ontario Museum. A few recent casualties of political correctness, a vigilant few waging a successful war against ad campaigns found offensive, inappropriate, or in the rom’s case, too darn frightening to be subway fodder.

Dieter Kaufmann, national creative director at Anderson Advertising, Toronto, has first-hand experience with losing to the vocal minority, having had two campaigns yanked and subsequently losing one of the accounts over the past year.

In this edition of On the Spot, Kaufmann discusses straddling the line between advertising that attracts attention and advertising that offends, laying out the factors that go into deciding when to risk or when not to risk.

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just as I was sitting down to collect my thoughts about what a creative director’s role and responsibilities might be when it comes to screening the agency’s work for ads that could be offensive to the target group or to the public in general, a headline on page two of a recent Advertising Age caught my attention: ‘Merck Pharmaceuticals pulls ad spoofing jfk assassination.’ I read on and find out they are talking about a commercial for an anti-parasite chemical. My instinctive reaction to this article is simple: the cd should be

Let me rephrase the thought. I think the cd, and the client, failed miserably on a number of issues, and I say that without having seen the actual ad.

First of all, how can the jfk assassination be relevant to an anti-parasite chemical? Did they ever consider the potential impact this ad could have on Merck from a corporate point of view?

They obviously don’t understand the power of advertising and the moral obligations that are placed into the hands of those who are trusted with that power. But most of all they failed to realize that this ad is simply over the top and in bad taste.

An ad like that would never see the light of day in this agency. I would ‘kill’ it simply because of my own personal beliefs and standards. However, not all decisions are this easy. What’s over the top for one target group can be bang-on for another. The words or images that offend one consumer could be the motivating factor for another.

How do I know what’s right and what’s wrong? How do I know when an idea that’s risky starts running the risk of offending the target group? Is it even my responsibility to know?

It is, in my humble opinion, the cd’s responsibility to understand and be totally sensitive to any situation that could be potentially embarrassing to the agency and client, or offend the target group and general public. It is a responsibility I’ve accepted with the title of cd, and I take it very seriously.

I usually take the following things into consideration before making a judgment.

First and foremost, before an ad even gets considered for presentation it has to be relevant, original and must have impact. Most stuff that could be potentially offensive is usually eliminated along the way. If it isn’t eliminated it’s because the idea is relevant to the product or service.

My next step in the process is the evaluation of the client’s corporate beliefs, values and standards, the media selection, the social fabric of the target group, and yes, even the general public.

If the ad still survives, I try to size up the risk. Let’s say, for instance, client and agency are willing to live with a few letters of complaint from women’s groups, as long as they are not part of our target group. For example, a scene in a tv commercial that shows Mom at work in the kitchen might be perfectly natural and acceptable to the target group, but could be considered to be unnecessary stereotyping by others.

You can’t please everybody, that’s why you might as well have the right message and tonality for your target group, even if it means risking some negative responses. The question is how much risk, and how accurate can you be in predicting it?

I would have predicted a major problem with some of Benetton’s latest ads. I simply have to believe that you are going to offend and lose some customers when you run an ad that shows the bloody clothes of a slain soldier.

On the other hand, I am totally surprised by the recent uproar over the Swatch poster. It’s an ad I would have approved because it’s innocent and playful, like the product, and probably works extremely well against the target group. In this case I congratulate the agency and client for defying censorship.

At Anderson, we never predicted a problem with a campaign that showed a woman in a flowing gown emerging from the center of a glass rose. It was the main visual of an extremely successful launch of an anti-depressant and was directed at doctors and psychiatrists only. A nurse who happened to see the ad found it offensive, even though she was not part of our target group. Her personal crusade ended with a letter to the president of the pharmaceutical company.

The campaign, despite it’s enormous success, was pulled, and a few months later we lost the business. I guess the lesson here is simple: never underestimate the power of a single consumer.

Over the past 25 years at Anderson, I can only recall three situations where consumers’ complaints resulted in the withdrawal of a campaign. But none was more dramatic or surprising than last year’s campaign for the Kenya Wildlife Fund.

Last summer two commercials were running in rotation on Discovery Channel and life network along with three print ads in Time magazine that dealt with the senseless killing of rhino, whose horn is used in Chinese medicine.

As always, our campaigns resulted in strong reactions, from the public, both positive and negative. Except this time we received a little more than expected. We received a death threat. The rcmp considered the death threat to be of a serious nature and we pulled the campaign. Perhaps there is such a thing as a campaign that’s too effective!

Society and people’s values change constantly. What’s acceptable today will be considered offensive tomorrow. And vice versa. The one thing that stays constant is a creative director’s moral obligation to help produce work that does not blatantly offend, but it also is his or her duty to encourage work that stimulates and motivates the consumer, even if it means taking a calculated risk, some of the time.

It’s a fine line that separates a risky idea from the risk of losing a consumer, but it’s a line a good cd should have no problem navigating.