A-style: harmless nipple-slip or unfair tactics

A much greater understanding of the subversive marketing movement can be found here in the Street Marketing Edition of French-English language marketing journal UNIQUE. It raises the question of what will prevent the subversive marketing movement from continuing to shock us and change the goalposts for acceptable commercial behavior within the context of society.

Without doubt, the success of FCUK and A-style will be emulated by other brands in the pursuit of the dollar. And until a limit is drawn, the behaviors of this infant marketing technology known as buzz marketing will give rise to many other "out-there" brands, each intent on shocking society to obtain brand recognition.

It was the presence of the A-style imagery on broadcast free-to-air television that made a huge difference to my perceptions.

The Internet is going global and mobile all at the same time. Within a few years there will two thirds of the people on the planet all seeing imagery via the Internet. It cannot be stopped, but at least it’s a place where you can choose what you see. It is an environment of choice.

Broadcast TV is a different animal and has direct access to the public psyche. It’s possible that the TV stations broadcasting the event may have been unaware of the imagery in the background.

The international sports sponsorship has long been the domain of smart marketers with large budgets, so it is interesting to see the arrival of A-style in the big league when most of its marketing budget would have been spent on stickers until now.

Curiously, international sports sponsorship has also been the domain of marketers of products which have questionable benefit to society and difficulty getting past regulatory frameworks in many countries – alcohol, tobacco and gambling. The governments of the world are already addicted to the money they glean from taxes on revenues from both these areas, and the international gateway to society of satellite TV has bypassed existing local laws many times already. While these subjects are seen by many as relatively clear-cut in terms of the negative impact they cause on the health of individuals and society as a whole, the debate over the appropriateness of subliminal marketing tactics like those used by A-Style falls into a greyer area, but it's one that warrants discussion in the era of ever expanding global media.

Mike Hanlon