So you've heard the old business adage that "any press is good press." Some companies and organizations abide by this marketing philosophy with so much belief that they base their entire marketing strategies on this premise in hopes of creating enough sensationalism and scandal to receive notable and frequent coverage and attention.

Unfortunately for those companies, though, the old adage just doesn't hold up.

Just ask Wal-Mart about the power of bad press and the Internet. In 2006, the retail giant once again found itself in the midst of a "bad press scandal" after this blunder reported by the Associated Press caused the company to completely dismantle one of its online shopping features:

Wal-Mart Stores is shutting down the automated system that creates movie recommendations on its shopping website after the system randomly linked a Planet of the Apes DVD to films about African-Americans including Martin Luther King Jr., the company said Thursday. Wal-Mart said it had fixed the immediate problem by removing what it called the "offensive combinations" from a webpage on www.walmart.com advertising a boxed DVD set, Planet Of The Apes: The Complete TV Series.

Once the Internet community got ahold of the news, things went from bad to worse for Wal-Mart and its PR department.

Wal-Mart moved swiftly after a link to the page for Planet of the Apes began circulating by e-mail on the Internet.

Clearly, the coverage of this particular news-making event online hurt Wal-Mart, at least in terms of company respectability, and quite possibly in terms of sales. And while the incident likely drove up traffic exponentially to Walmart.com, that increase in traffic led to a decrease in the quality of the company's image and credibility.

The Implications of Bad Press: A Study of PETA

Take, for instance, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Few activist organizations have names as instantly recognizable and well-known as PETA.

That, in terms of marketing for an organization, is a very good thing.

But unfortunately for PETA, its extremist nature and sensational news-making stunts have also led to a bit of a distaste with many folks.

Because PETA relies heavily on outrageous public stunts to raise awareness for animal rights, a high percentage of people who are aware of the organization have little respect for extremist activity, and give little bearing to anything that the organization does. That, in turn, makes for a tremendous blow to the issues that PETA and other animal rights activist are trying to raise awareness about. When I say "animal rights," someone with knowledge about PETA and its extremist activity might instantly disregard the issues associated with it because of their opinion of the nation's most vocal animal rights group.

That means PETA's image not only has a negative impact on the organization's credibility and image, but also on that of animal rights in general. The organization ends up hurting the very issue it is trying to promote.

The Study

When I was working on my Master's degree, I did a little research on the topic. I created a study that showcased a variety of PETA's online and print advertisements. The survey included four ads each for the categories promoting a vegan lifestyle, fur used for clothing, animals used for research purposes, and the treatment of animals in entertainment. The ads ranged on a continuum of their extreme nature - including those that contained bloody photographs of mutilated animals, cartoon images, text-only advertisements, ads features celebrities, and emotional photos intended to elicit a variety of emotions.

The survey included pre-study questions regarding individual attitudes about PETA, as well as individual questions regarding the reactions and opinions in response to each advertisment displayed. After the completion of the survey, each person was asked to complete a survey similar to the initial one to help gauge whether or not their attitudes about PETA had changed.

The Results

The results of the pilot study of my survey were interesting. The people who took the survey had varying opinions of PETA to begin with, but after being exposed to the extreme advertising tactics of the organization, most opinions of the organizations were lowered. (The "Your Mommy Kills Animals" campaign - which is targeted at children and features a knife-welding, blood splattered, rabbit-killing cartoon mother - seemed to do the most damage to PETA's image).

The survey also judged the audiences attitudes towards the issues associated with animal rights. The pilot study seemed to indicate that as attitudes toward PETA went from bad to worse, attitudes toward animal rights also seemed to change in a downward pattern.

Conclusions

So what does this have to do with online marketing? It's important to keep in mind that while sensational, news-worthy marketing strategies might raise awareness about your site or business, it's not always going to end with good results. If through these types of campaigns you create an image that is not respectable, it can have a significantly negative impact on your company.

Creativity is fabulous, but shock-marketing can keep your organization from gaining respect, which will call into question the credibility of everything the company says thereafter. And I guarantee that occasional media coverage of a well-respected company will have a much greater impact on business than frequent instances of bad media that deteriorates the company's image and respectability.