Rage Bait Marketing: How to Spot It and Build a Brand People Trust

You guys may have seen that Converse ad that came out a couple weeks ago.

I'm not going to post it again.

If you really want to see it, you can search for it.

But there was a lot of backlash about it because it was giving the impression of a lynching.

When I looked at it, I saw feet hanging in the dark next to somebody who was standing next to them.

And it did look like my first reaction was like, oh, is that a lynching? Because the way the feet were hanging, it looked like someone's hanging from a tree.

Now, here's the thing, though.

This is not the first time a company has created an ad that has sparked a lot of debate.

Over the last year and a half, I would say, there have been a number of companies.

There's American Eagle ad.

Target was just in the news.

Yes, Target, again, maybe a month ago for a Halloween costume.

And so what I want us to realize, the strategy now is rage, y'all.

Rage is the new currency.

I am not convinced these brands didn't know when they put these ads up.

I'm not convinced.

Because how many people do you have to go through before it is released? Either you're going through all the checks and balances and someone is raising the red flag and saying, hey, that's not really a good idea and it's being ignored.

Or people are deciding... hey, we know this is going to be problematic and we're going to post it anyway because we want to see what the people are saying.

The new strategy is Rage to get the conversation going about that brand over and over again.

Because when was the last time y'all talked about Converse? Just saying, right? Before that ad, when was the last time we talked about Converse? This is also at the same time when Nike's shares have dropped significantly.

Now, all of a sudden, one of the brands that they own, which is Converse, is in the headlines, and they have been trending for over a week, probably like two weeks.

I don't know what that did with their sales numbers, but at the end of the day, the goal is to rage bait you to become a trending topic, and that brand is now back into... our algorithms, and it's brand awareness all over again because we haven't talked about Converse sneakers in a very long time, right? And so I want us to be cognizant of that is that as much as we want to be angry, and we have a right to be angry, know that a lot of this stuff is intentional.

Our rage is currency.

They know we're going to get online and we're going to talk about it and we're going to write dissertations about it and we're going to dissect it.

We're going to do all the things.