Outrage marketing: Why the right needs to start ignoring 'woke' PR stunts

By Adam Edwards

EVER wondered why brands and celebrities seem to go out of their way to offend conservatives? It is because it pays them to.

Just look at Rihanna’s latest photoshoot for Interview magazine, in which the Barbadian singer dresses in a nun’s habit – and poses provocatively with one of her breasts out.

The image, which has been blasted all over the press and social media, has given the magazine’s Spring 2024 issue the sort of exposure even Vogue would struggle to achieve in 2024.

I doubt few of the pearl-clutching influencers so incensed by Rihanna's shoot had heard of Interview until it took this irreverent swipe at Catholicism. And that is precisely why it did it.

Bashing Christians and Christian traditions is a pretty easy way to get publicity these days, as Britain's supermarket chain Iceland proved this Easter, when it announced that it was removing the traditional cross emblem from some of its hot cross buns and renaming them “hot tick buns”.

The decision by the troubled chain – which had to close 19 stores last year – was an obvious example of what is known in the trade as “outrage marketing”, where companies attack or ridicule their customers’ beliefs and traditions in order to gain cheap publicity and exposure.

It has become an increasingly common practice in the Anglosphere, with some high-profile recent examples in the UK alone, including Nike “updating” the Cross of St George on the England football team’s shirts with the colours of the bisexual flag; the Tudors being re-cast using black and mixed-raced actors in a new adaption of Wolf Hall; and an actress of Ghanaian-Nigerian ancestry being given the female lead in a production of Romeo and Juliet.

In each case, what was essentially a pretty uninspiring launch story – that would have gained minimal publicity – was turned into major news by conservative pundits.

It has become a really effective marketing tool during the so-called “culture wars”.

Take the theatre group that asked white Londoners not to attend some of its performances in February, on the grounds that they might make black audience members uncomfortable by their presence.

Do you think a play at Britain’s obscure Theatre Royal Stratford East would have garnered anything more than a mention in an industry magazine had it not sent out a press release attacking the country’s ethnic majority? 

Likewise, would any newspaper on the planet have run a story about North Face offering its customers a 20 per cent discount code in March this year, had its miserly offer not being linked to shoppers having to spend an hour of their time filling in an anti-racism questionnaire?

No, me neither.

But the right-wing press has proven extremely naive in how it reacts to such blatant attention seeking from brands and pressure groups it describes as “woke”.

We saw this most obviously with their coverage of groups like Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, whose every petulant outburst is immediately amplified by an outraged media. We are now seeing it with the pro-Palestine protesters, whose childish college sit-ins are being turned into major news stories.

The media made Just Stop Oil a household name by giving rolling coverage to three or four loons with tomato soup – while simultaneously ignoring hundreds of thousands of anti-lockdown protesters peacefully marching through London and other major cities. 

Many Just Stop Oil activists have spoken publicly about how they were only radicalised themselves after watching news coverage of protests. 

The media has arguably done the same with the trans issue too, turning what was once a very rare medical condition – gender dysphoria – into a major issue that has resulted in our language and laws being re-written and the illness itself being turned into what some psychologists warn is a form of “social contagion”.

Conservatives need to stop being so predictable and start treating woke stunts like they would petulant toddlers throwing a hissy fit.

They will soon break out of the habit. You just need to ignore them.

Adam Edwards is a freelance journalist and editor.