Art vs Advertising: What Fluid Hair Salon didn't know...

The uproar has been deafening. People's social media feeds have been flooded by the debacle. Fluid Salon in Edmonton produced the above ad, and it has caught the eyes and ires of people across the country.

I don't need to discuss whether the ad was good or bad, appropriate or not. The people have already spoken on that one. You can see the creators' defenses here and here and Ryan Jespersen's incredibly well written response here. There have been a number of PR professionals who have used this as an opportunity to share conflict management strategies. (Namely, accept that people got offended, apologize and make good. Simple. Reminds me of another mess with an Edmonton actor at last year's Fringe festival.) There has also been a lot of anger.

The ad has been defended as art. That there is perhaps more going on than the obvious interpretation. But there's a problem with that. There's a logo. There's a tagline. It's not art, it's advertising. Although I believe that there is artistry in creating ads, advertising and art are not interchangeable words.

Fringe Festival Handbilling as Marketing 101

Copyright Pixelens Photography

It's amazing really. I watch people handbilling on the grounds of the Edmonton Fringe Festival and I see a microcosm of all things marketing. Sure, it makes sense. People doing shows have a product and they are trying to find a consumer to pay for that product. But the number of basic advertising tenets that manifest themselves in these many transactions, both good an bad, continues to amaze me.

I know a bunch of people who hate handbilling. Mostly because they hate interrupting someone to thrust an unwelcome, uninvited advertising message upon them. Which is a good reaction to have. Because people hate to have unwelcome, uninvited advertising messages thrust upon them.

Read on to see just a few of the marketing lessons that can be gleaned from watching an earnest actor simply trying to plug their show.

Dangerous Emails: Are people reading it the way you wrote it?

©glowinthedarkpictures.com

Every time we come up with a new way of communicating with each other, we also develop new and interesting ways to really offend each other. A quote that is sometimes attributed to Oscar Wilde goes something like: "I'm sorry I wrote such a long letter, I didn't have time to write a shorter one." It is very difficult to maintain any sense of tone when we condense our words. The shorter the communication, the more tone we tend to leave out, for the sake of information. With fewer tonal clues put in by the writer, the more the reader tends to put in. Thus the easier it is to misinterpret the intent behind the message.

With email, texting, Twitter, Facebook and instant messaging, our means of communicating is getting shorter and shorter.

And a lot of people are getting really pissed off.