From an opportunity to a mistake there is little distance. When to keep quiet as a brand?

From an opportunity to a mistake there is little distance. When to keep quiet as a brand?

There are times when any brand can see an opportunity to generate content under a context that it sees as favorable and that can contribute to its image, when reality is different and it may seem opportunistic on its part to be part of those moments.

In order to differentiate that distance between an opportunity and a mistake, we must take into account the context in which our target or the population to which we want to get our message is found and even more important the type of social context we want to be part of.

It is essential to distinguish when our brand is part of the environment we want to enter and when we are forcing our communication to take advantage of the situation, something that our public can immediately identify.

Now how do we make this differentiation? We can take as reference some cases where brands tried to create communication but their target perceived it as opportunism:

Procter & Gamble’s “The Choice”

McDonald’s “One of Us”

In both cases, the “Black Lives Matter” movement was chosen to generate content that showed the brands supporting said movement, but what was achieved in both was to show P&G and McDonald's as opportunists due to the context that existed at the time. United States, according to a study by Ace Metrix.

Specifically, this study revealed that the communication by P&G was perceived as negative. While the McDonald 's target disagreed with the way they executed it and it seemed an opportunism of the moment.

In conclusion, brands must study the context in which each one is located and the perception that its target has about it, when creating a campaign for a specific social situation or simply for the communication that it develops in its day to day.

Alvaro Ulate.

Creative