In the back-to-school issue of its quarterly magazine, popular clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch wanted to glorify collegiate life, so it packed the book with images of kids playing hard and tips for living on the edge.
Drinking, sex, dragging -- the message is, college has it all. The magazine includes a feature called "Drinking 101," with a pull-out game board and recipes for hard-liquor concoctions such as "Brain Hemorrhage" and "Foreplay." The folks at Abercrombie offer helpful hints for "dorm room seduction," such as "Briefs conceal your excitement better than boxers" and, "Sex can work in a single bed. Just be creative." Images of fun include a centerfold of men streaking and women stuffed in two cars, apparently ready to race.
But while Abercrombie saw all this as part of college life, the chain found that parents, and several consumer groups, didn't like the retailer's definition of fun -- and thus began a controversy.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving took the lead, blasting the current issue of A&F Quarterly in a news release two weeks ago, calling it "among the most blatantly irresponsible pieces of marketing we've ever seen." The battle escalated from that point. But as over-the-top as Abercrombie's marketing materials may have been, and as strong as MADD's attack on the retailer was, marketing experts say this debate lasted longer and garnered more media coverage than one might expect, largely because it was actually helping both sides.
It was only yesterday that Abercrombia and MADD reached an uneasy cease-fire, but the retailer already has benefited from soaring interest in its controversial catalogue and MADD got two weeks of valuable headlines for its message.
"Everybody wins on this one, and wins big," said Rick Hindin, a marketing expert and president of Adworks Inc., a Washington advertising agency. "The beautiful part about what Abercrombie can do now is they can say, You're right,' and talk about how to drink appropriately and how not to drink -- all the while gaining something they couldn't have bought through conventional advertising: notoriety and an edge in their target market."
Marketing experts say a well-managed controversy is a foolproof way to become known in an era when it's increasingly difficult for companies to break through the clutter of consumers' busy lives.
That could explain why the MADD-Abercrombie controversy escalated the way it did. After placing a sticker urging responsible drinking on its plastic-wrapped quarterly catalogues, which sell for $5 in stores, Abercrombie yesterday announced it would eliminate the drinking article from copies of the 215-page magazine that had not yet been sold. It also said it would send a mea culpa postcard to the 700,000 customers who received the Quarterly by mail.
The company acknowledges the catalogue went too far. "We made a mistake in describing a drinking game' that could be interpreted as encouraging binge drinking," Abercrombie's postcard will say.
The chain sought MADD's approval of its plan but went ahead without the group's blessing because MADD did not respond quickly, said company spokesman Lonnie Fogel. MADD, meanwhile, held a news conference yesterday saying that it wants the catalogue pulled and that removing the article is not enough.
Even as Abercrombie was yanking its catalogues from stores yesterday morning, MADD President Karolyn Nunnallee was proclaiming that the chain was merely "trying to turn an F into a D."
Late in the day, however, a MADD spokeswoman said Abercrombie's actions represented "a huge step in the right direction." Abercrombie, surprised by the reversal, said it was pleased with the apparent truce.
The fevered nature of the battle surprised no one, given the buttons the catalogue pushed. Marketing experts say the feature about drinking was incendiary, given the problems so many colleges are facing with dangerous drinking by students.
"This one would've been hard to miss," said Merrie Spaeth, president of Spaeth Communications in Dallas, which specializes in crisis management. "Anybody should've seen this coming."
Advocates for responsible drinking are incensed by the message they say the catalogue sends.
"Any company whose target audience is youth, they have to have a higher sense of responsibility. They have to think about what they're doing," said Nunnallee, whose daughter, along with 26 other people, was killed by a drunken driver in a bus accident in Kentucky a decade ago.
"Kids don't need to be taught how to drink," she said. "We, as the American public, need to take a stand, as MADD did, as other organizations have done, and say this is unacceptable."
Yet efforts to come up with a joint resolution were hampered at every turn. Abercrombie's first step -- the sticker -- wasn't enough for MADD. When MADD's leadership requested a meeting with Abercrombie's chairman in Columbus, Ohio, where the chain is based, no mutually acceptable time could be found. And when Abercrombie proposed its latest solution to MADD on Monday, MADD held a news conference rather than respond to the company,.
All the while, the catalogue was growing hotter than hot.
"It's kind of like the forbidden fruit that your parents tell you you can't have; it only incites you to get a copy," Fogel said. "We feel sadness because, in a perverse way, MADD undermined their own efforts."
Or did they? Some marketing experts argue that public interest groups such as MADD are willing to take that risk to garner publicity for their causes.
"It's so important for them to generate publicity since they don't have funding for advertising, in many cases," said Ellis Verdi, a marketing expert and president of DeVito Verdi, a New York advertising agency. "It happens all the time."
What becomes difficult for companies in that situation, Verdi said, is juggling the respect they have for the group's message with the disdain they feel for its approach. "It's hard to attack them on their tactics and still claim belief in the organization," he said.
Nunnallee said her priority in battling Abercrombie is getting the chain to respond by pulling the catalogue. But secondly, she hopes to ensure that other corporations act responsibly in the future -- and that takes publicity. "The media has really responded to this, and we need the media behind us," she said. "And the fact is that the media perceives this as a sexy' issue. If that's what it takes to get the message out that alcohol is killing our young people, then that's what MADD has to do."
Abercrombie has been one of the retail industry's success stories recently, largely as a result of a makeover from yet another mall store to the quintessential collegiate clothier of the day. Marketing gurus like that don't let a drinking game get published by mistake, advertising executive Hindin maintained.
"This was a calculated maneuver with damage control, in my opinion," he said. "There is no claim that an advertiser could make that could parallel an angry mother. It was a stroke of genius. Did they go too far? Absolutely. Was it a calculated risk? I'm positive." CAPTION: A warning label, above, that Abercrombie & Fitch has put on its magazine/catalogue for the collegiate set has not appeased consumer groups outraged at a feature called "Drinking 101." It comes with a cutout wheel for playing a drinking game and recipes for such cocktails as "Brain Hemorrhage" and "Dirty Girl Scout Cookie." CAPTION: Mothers Against Drunk Driving President Karolyn Nunnallee decries the Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue at a news conference.
