The fear-free ad

This really should come as no surprise to anybody who has been following the marketing campaign for Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. Last week I touched on the fear-based campaign, and I saw further evidence of it yesterday while doing a Google News search for the search string “Great White Shark.” I noticed in the Google Ads that Discovery Channel’s “bring fear back to Shark Week” attitude was in full-force. To their credit, out of the five ads that I came across, one of them was “fear-free” and simply, descriptively, and effectively advertised Shark Week. The remaining four rely more on conjuring up fear towards the animals they are featuring in their upcoming programming…

Graphic content and fear abounds

While doing a search on “sharks” today, I ran into another “Graphic Content” ad for FrenziedWaters.com, Discovery’s horror-themed promotional website for Shark Week.

Graphic Shark Videos, with bits of flesh? Are you serious?

Discovery Channel, your marketing campaign continues to disappoint me and is a disservice to shark conservation efforts.