The advertising maxim “it doesn’t matter if they say good or bad about me, the important thing is that they do” gained notoriety with Oliviero Toscani, the creative who revolutionized Benetton’s campaigns in the 80s and 90s. His approach deliberately broke with the standards in force at the time, replacing well-known personalities or flashy models with raw but impactful images: AIDS patients, convicts on death row, newborns still attached to the umbilical cord. The advantages of this strategy are evident. In a world saturated with messages, capturing attention is an art.
Of course, such a strategy is not without drawbacks. Shock as a communicational instrument tends to wear out and, over time, generates saturation. The line between provoking reflection and exploiting suffering is fine and Toscani was often accused of instrumentalizing tragedies to obtain commercial dividends.
Interestingly, the use of controversy as a driver of visibility is closely associated with contemporary dynamics of political communication. Let’s focus on Portugal. It is known that Chega adopts a stance that favors a high impact on public opinion. Instead of avoiding confrontations, it seems to seek them as a way of reinforcing its presence on the media stage and mobilizing disillusioned voters who reject the wokismo and political correctness.
Take the recent campaign “This is not Bangladesh” and “Gypsies must obey the law”. Any sane and dispassionate spirit will say that phrases like these are complete nonsense. This is, in fact, what countless competent, serious and respected analysts did: rationally explain the obvious, exposing the contradictions of the campaign.
But André Ventura’s objective is not to be right, but to create buzzeven if for this it is necessary to appeal to the nonsense that induces the most primary passions. And then it wins across the board: the more competent, serious and respected analysts criticize the campaign, the more Chega gains in media presence.
From a communications point of view, all that remains is for some court to order the posters to be removed. In this case, Ventura, revealing the false indignation that he is a master of, will rejoice in two or three weeks of controversy with Chega at the top of the media space.
Now come the presidential and the show must go on. The far-right candidate, despite not wanting to be President of the Republic, will remain the same as himself: aggressive, controversial, theatrical; the other candidates and most analysts will spend time, words and brain cells refuting their untruths and nonsense; and at the end Ventura will boast that he was the candidate who attracted the most audiences in the debates and the most attention from commentators.