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| (Clip from Red Bull Advert - Source: www.zalebs.howzit.msn.com) |
A lot of comments, blogs, tweets and articles were written in the last week about Red Bull's Jesus advert - if you type in the words "Red Bull + Jesus advert" in Google search you will get 4,180 000 results!
The question for most people was, why would Red Bull use religion to sell their product? In a country where the last census (2001) indicated that 79.1 percent of the country is Christian. Furthermore, 36 percent are Christians belonging to African indigenous churches - you are bound to offend somebody.
And let's be honest, Red Bull cartoons have always looked at well known themes with a twinkle in the eye, it is surely not their intention to offend anybody. So the question remains - why did Red Bull go with the Jesus advert in a Christian faith dominant country? Did they analyse their stakeholders? Maybe the Communication team did have a close look at 'who' their audiences are and new that if they give them something controversial to look at, that we will be talking, laughing, debating over the advert long after the advert has been removed...
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| Red Bull Princes and the Frog (Source:www.redbull.com) |
i do not believe they intended on offending anyone... religion is a risky topic in any country when it comes to the media, as many people of christian faith do not like to see their religion used as a marketing tool. religious folks are a little over sensitive at times.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, but I think the point I'm trying to make that in a country where religion is so important, we as communication/ marketing practitioners need to be careful on how creative we get with our campaigns. Somebody suggested that maybe this campaign of Red Bull is communicating something about the brand - that the brand shows and has no respect for religion. But, yes I agree that religion is a risky topic, then don't go there!
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