It’s all the rage––get consumer’s attention by performing wild stunts that nearly get people killed. Among the most recent examples of this strange genre are Mini’s back flip of an actual car (shown above), Red Bull’s much-publicized jump from the edges of outer space, and GoPro’s “fearless woman” filming herself swimming with sharks (seen below). Since today’s consumers are being overcome by information, advertisers feel the need to do outrageous things just to get attention. And media outlets like the Los Angeles Times anxiously eat it up, giving advertisers even more of a reason to do these things in the first place. After all, what’s better than free publicity?
But it does make one wonder how far advertisers will go to rise above the clutter. When someone eventually dies filming one of these ads, will we finally look upon them as being the unnecessarily dangerous stunts that they are? Will we then realize how positively stupid it was to kill someone all in the name of selling a product?
Media Ethics Report 