Actress Sydney Sweeney in the controversial campaign for American Eagle.
Marketing à la rage bait has many more advantages than disadvantages for many brands. Outrage conquers companies’ new priority: attention.
Nowadays we see more and more radical marketing, designed to shock, divide and, above all, generate conversation and, of course, sales. Lots of sales. And the rage bait marketing in action. But what is this rage bait, for those who don’t know yet?
Rage bait is a strategy that was born on social media and has now spread to the business world. It’s simple: it consists of publishing something provocative, even without agreeing with what is published, with one and only one objective: to obtain more engagement, whether in the form of comments full of insults or shares aimed at criticizing the content. Because hatred, anger and controversy sometimes make up for the visibility they create.
“I will never leave dirty dishes in the sink”, reads a poster in New York (the one on the right in the publication below). The campaign was launched by Friend, to promote the AI companions they produce.
Largest NYC subway campaign ever
Happening now
— Avi (@AviSchiffmann)
Many saw the campaign as a degrading and unsettling view of the relationship between humans and machines. The reaction was intense and swift: much criticism, serial vandalization of posters, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) was forced to repeatedly remove or replace advertisements, according to .
Friend’s CEO and author of the post, Avi Schiffmann, said he already expected this response. He even left blank spaces, paid for anyway, to encourage protest graffiti.
Shortly afterwards, new controversy in NY: Nucleus Genomics, which analyzes people’s DNA to predict the health of their children, invaded the stations with an even more sensitive campaign.
The ads, spread across more than a thousand carriages, hundreds of street locations and with a complete “takeover” of the Broadway–Lafayette station, feature phrases such as “height is 80% genetics”, “IQ is 50% genetics”, “have the best baby possible with the best genes”. The posters refer to the website “pickyourbaby.com”, where the company promotes its genetic screening and embryo selection services.
The logic of rage bait marketing
Joshua Lewis, professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business, explains to Fast Company that for startups in emerging and polarizing areas, a certain level of shock may be a rational strategy.
Products such as AI companions or embryo selection services tend to divide public opinion: there are those who consider them morally unacceptable and those who see them as inevitable or even desirable progress.
By taking a deliberately provocative stance, these companies end up stimulate a debate broad cultural. And the debate ends up greatly strengthening the company’s connection to the public that defends it together in the face of discord.
In short: if the outrage comes mainly from people who would never be customers, the reputational cost is limited. And so the notoriety even grows, and with it the affinity of segments that are already predisposed to accept or support this type of technology.
Elizabeth Paul, head of strategy at The Martin Agency, highlights another point: when the product itself is already controversial, the scandal is “embedded” in the value proposition itself. Instead of trying to sidestep this tension, companies like Nucleus and Friend choose to make it the center of the narrative.
The market is saturated and attract attention is little by little becoming the number 1 priority for companies. Outrage gets attention.
“Great jeans!” The Sweeney Example
Nucleus admits that it was inspired by another recent campaign, also very poorly received by the public. We talk about the partnership between Sydney Sweeney and the brand American Eaglewhere the famous actress talks about how “genes are passed from parents to children”, lightly associating us with characteristics such as hair or skin color, before firing off the real controversial trigger: “great jeans” (great jeans/genes).
The publicity even led to interviews with the actress as a request to justify her position. It was on the verge of being canceled due to its association with conservative and MAGA ideals — which to this day it neither admits nor denies.
From an advertising point of view, rage bait marketing paid off: there are already 10 million views on YouTube alone for a mere 30-second ad.
Returning to Nucleus, the company said it had registered, since the launch of the campaign, a increase of more than 1700% in salesdriven mainly by enrollments in its IVF+ program. The brand also claims almost five million impressions from organic online reactions alone. Something similar happened with Friend: the wave of criticism, news and memes made the CEO consider the campaign an “overwhelming success”.
What is new is not exactly the use of the scandal as bait (it has happened before), but rather the way in which brands seek to emphasize and force the most controversial parts of their products: it pays off.
For Jaime Robinson, co-founder of the agency Joan Creative, the political climate current influences this position of companies. Give the clearest example: Donald Trumpwhich constantly mobilizes supporters through clearly polarizing statements.
