The Marketers Aren't That Dumb

If an ad trivializes religion (the sacred, the holy, the whatever), a large segment of the population will be upset. It happens repeatedly. Surely the marketers understand this. Yet they persist, like children who do something wrong on purpose, then recant and say "sorry," and then smirk and do it again. It's tiresome and leads me to believe there's something more to it: an effort to gain indirect publicity from the adverse reaction.

Sony has apologized for an advertising campaign for its PlayStation game console which featured a young man wearing a crown of thorns with the slogan "Ten years of passion".

Some Catholics were outraged by the advertisements, which ran in newspapers and magazines to celebrate the product's tenth anniversary.

Link.