How are controversial ads still getting approved?

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Dave Hall from Richmond, Virginia, asks:

I was reading about the Calloway driver ad gaff and the apology statement they released and immediately thought back to this article [on how controversial ads get greenlit]. I guess getting groupthink out of the boardroom is a problem that's not going away soon! Why are companies STILL getting this wrong?

An insensitive, tone-deaf ad can incur the wrath of social media and can even cause a company's market value to plummet by billions. Yet companies continue to make advertising blunders, like our reader Dave pointed out.

One of the latest failures in the advertising world involves the sports manufacturing company Callaway Golf and the media company Good Good Golf. The companies released an ad depicting Good Good co-founder Garrett Clark shoving a female player to the ground. Clark then tells her "do not touch my new driver" as ominous music plays in the background.

The ad prompted swift backlash across social media from users calling out the act of violence depicted in the video.

Good Good Golf founder and CEO Matt Kendrick told the Wall Street Journal the ad was supposed to be a spoof of the horror film "Obsession."

“We fully own that we did make a mistake…As the CEO of the company, the buck stops with me and we should have had better processes in place,” Kendrick told the Journal. “Obviously the execution missed the mark and didn’t come across the way that we wanted to, and in no way were we trying to make light of or support violence. But it came across that way, and that’s our fault.”

Following the ad's backlash, Kendrick and president Joe Flannery exited the company. The PGA Tour also said Good Good Golf would no longer be the title sponsor of its fall tournament, while Callaway ended its relationship with the company and pledged $1 million to domestic violence groups.

Callaway released a statement on X stating it would conduct "internal and external investigations" into the ad and said it has already made changes to the ad-approval process. The company said that Good Good Golf produced the video, but that Callaway approved it.

Marketplace reached out to Good Good Golf and Callaway for comment, but did not receive a response by publication time.

Jennifer Cacioppo, an advertising veteran who runs the firm Cassiopeia Consulting, was as bewildered by the ad as our reader Dave, and wondered how it got approved.

"I found it violent and menacing, and just far from entertaining. When I first saw it, that was exactly my question: How could a piece of content like this make its way out of a big corporation like Callaway?" said Cacioppo, who also used to be the executive vice president and business lead for the advertising agency Leo Burnett.

While Cacioppo doesn't know how this particular ad got greenlit, she points to a lack of representation in the approval process as one possible reason.

Some companies create ads using in-house teams, but many use outside ad agencies for major advertising. These agencies typically have three departments, which include accounts people who are on the business strategy side, a creative team that comes up with the ideas, and people who produce the ads, Marketplace reported back in 2017. “There’s a lot of client engagement and collaboration along the way,” Cacioppo told us in a 2017 interview.

At the time, Cacioppo told Marketplace agencies like Leo Burnett are "very self-critical" about their work before it leaves the building. Sometimes the system can fail when it comes to an ad like, say, the 2017 Pepsi commercial with Kendall Jenner. The commercial sparked widespread backlash from people who said it trivialized the Black Lives Matter movement.

"They started with a great insight and somewhere it went awry. You wish that somebody in one of those rooms could have raised their hand on that one," Cacioppo said.

To avoid advertising controversies in the future, advertising veteran Shawn Zupp said the advertising and marketing industries should continue the aim of being inclusive.

"I think the continued pursuit of diversified voices, so representation is there, will probably always help people in a room looking at ideas," said Zupp, who's a professor of the practice of advertising at Boston University.

Ultimately, humans are at the core of advertising, Zupp said.

"It's humans creating the content. It's humans deciding it, whether it be in-house agencies or external agencies, or the brands themselves, and I think that there is some truth to the fact that human beings can have blind spots, and I think that continues to happen," Zupp said. "Are we getting better at the blind spots over time? Maybe, but not perfectly."

Companies today are also racing to rush out content, which raises questions about whether ads are being tested enough in front of focus groups, Zupp said.

Zupp said he's worked on many campaigns where they'd do rough animations for their ideas and ask questions. Companies could consider rededicating themselves to better screening and testing, he noted.

Advertising tries to bold, and with so many platforms out there, brands are probably facing increased pressure to stand out and stir conversations, Zupp said.

As companies try to push the envelope, that increases the odds of "walking into a little bit of a minefield," he said.

Zupp said that while people in the industry can sometimes get caught up with having bold ideas, there should be more education and training offered so that they can understand sensitive issues. Zupp pointed out the advertising company R/GA, where he used to work, did diversity training.

"All good agencies and organizations do that, and we're better for it. But can we do it and apply it more in how we look at creative ideas, and put ourselves in more people's shoes? I think all those things would have value," Zupp said.