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Notes -
These aren't "buy our insurance because it's 23.6% cheaper than the competition" kinds of ads. These are lifestyle type of ads. They are promoting certain style and outlook on life and associate it with the brand. If this style is offensive to people who previously associated themselves with the brand, then these people would feel negatively towards the brand from now on. And such kind of action is aimed at everybody, all the time - multi-national brand is not something you advertise in secret. And culture war is not something you join unwittingly - not that BL marketers didn't publish plenty of proclamations suggesting very clearly on whose side they are joining.
Let me give you an extreme example. Suppose some crazy marketer, after taking too much cocaine one night, decided that Nazis - I mean the real ones, the guys prancing around with swastikas and tiki torches - are an under-covered market, and his brand needs to have a campaign aimed at them. And suppose, by a series of freak accidents and misunderstandings, this plan gets approved, set in production and the resulting ad - featuring all a real Nazi loves and seeks in life, presented as a positive lifestyle associated with the brand - is posted on official Instagram channel.
After that happened, and the inevitable aftermath - do you think your explanation that people just don't understand that not all ads are aimed at them is going to play very well or convince somebody that it doesn't mean anything that they disliked the ad?
P.S. For the "trigger warning" part of the audience, hopefully minor, but ever vocal, explicit disclaimer - no, I am not comparing anybody to Nazis. Except for, you know, the actual Nazis.
And that the product is bagels. Or menorahs.
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