As Edmonton's Fluid Salon is learning, sometimes free speech can be very, very expensive
by Max Fawcett, Managing Editor
All publicity is good publicity, right? Well, not always, as the owner of Edmonton’s Fluid Salon may (or may not) be learning right now. The salon’s latest advertisement features a woman with a black eye sitting on a couch, while a well-dressed man – presumably, the one who beat her – stands menacingly in the background carrying a necklace of some sort. The tagline, which reads “Look good in all you do,” seems to suggest that even battered women ought to spend $150 on a hair cut.
Sarah Cameron, the salon’s owner, has tried to justify the controversial advertisement as an act of free speech. On her Facebook profile, she posted a note defending the decision to run the ad, saying -
“Please interpret the ad as freedom dictates – that is your right – just as artistic expression is our right.”
This is, in the strictest legal sense, a defensible argument. But as the Edmonton Journal’s Paula Simons wrote in her latest column, “artistic expression and freedom of speech don’t exist in a vacuum. Artists who set out to be provocative can’t much complain when audiences are thus provoked. If you set out to court controversy, you can’t cry foul when controversy arises. And in this day and age of social media, when public reaction can flame up, unexpectedly, across not just a city but a continent, those who play with PR fire always run the risk of getting burnt.”
So far, at least, Cameron’s getting torched. Already, the salon’s Google maps and Yelp profiles have both received three negative reviews as a direct result of the advertising campaign, while facebook and twitter feeds across the country have been filled with expressions of disgust and disdain for the salon and its decision to run – and back – the ad.
It’s unlikely that her latest efforts to justify her decision are going to satisfy this increasingly angry mob. As it turns out, the advertisement wasn’t intended to promote the salon or attract new customers, but instead to provoke a discussion about violence against women and encourage donations to women’s groups. “They should want to do something about it – not just sit behind their computers and bash me,” Cameron told CTV. “They should want to do more and that was the whole point of that.”
Steve Williams, the author of Alberta Venture’s Marketing Intel column and a former chief creative officer for a national marketing communications firm, says that he’s seen this story play out before. The question now, he says, is whether Cameron will stick to her guns or give in and apologize. “When you float an ad like this, you have to be prepared to go all the way,” he says. “Don’t bend. A principle isn’t a principle until it costs you money.”
The lesson in this for other companies, Williams says, is that controversy on its own only creates trouble. “Controversy works best when it’s relevant,” he says. “That’s not the case here. What does abuse have to do with hair? It’s easy to be controversial (see the Benetton campaign from the ’80s). What’s harder is to be relevant.”
