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How a junior mining company’s video became a cautionary tale for marketers

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Dave Burnett | September 14, 2016 10:22 AM ET
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YouTube screenshotA KWG Resources video uses two bikini-clad women to promote the Ring of Fire mining region.

Here’s a cautionary tale for marketers everywhere. If somebody at your next marketing meeting suggests using two scantily clad young women to convey terribly mundane facts about mining — yes, mining — suggest they reconsider their chosen profession. Unless, as the chief executive or business owner, the idea was yours. In which case you need to heed the sage advice of your marketing team and change course before embarrassing your company.

Either approach might have helped prevent last month’s epic marketing failure by Canadian mining company KWG Resources. In it, two bikini-clad women share facts about the Ring of Fire, a mineral-rich area in Northern Ontario.

In a media interview, Frank Smeenk, CEO of KWG Resources, defended the video: “Attractive women attract eyes,” he said. “All junior companies trying to raise capital for exploration are always trying to figure out how to bring attention to their stories.”

While the latter comment is true, it’s the former one that’s problematic. Yes, sex can sell in certain marketing contexts. But mining? There’s a good chance Smeenk hoped to make a “viral” video before he produced this clip, which is a mistake many companies make.

KYLE GENNINGS/TIMMINS DAILY PRESS/QMI AGENCYFrank Smeenk, CEO of KWG Resources, defended his companies decision to make a video with bikini-clad women talking about the Ring of Fire — a marketing move that was widely considered a PR disaster.

This video highlights two potential pitfalls for marketers in the digital era: the main one is the need to tailor all collateral to suit your brand — and that includes a focus on professionalism and recognizing obvious social and cultural sensitivities. The second is to remember that video lasts forever online, which means it has to be produced at a certain quality that can effectively showcase your brand’s value propositions and competitive advantage over the long haul.

Attractive women attract eyes.

The KWG video misses on the first point because it’s not only inconsistent with other videos the company has produced — most of which are interviews filmed in an office setting — but also because it’s completely unprofessional and inappropriate in an era when this sort of boys’ club tone is being weeded out of the cultural narrative.

This was a tone-deaf effort to appeal to customers in a traditionally male-dominated industry, hence the focus on T&A over Q&A. It’s also really lame.

As for online longevity, there’s a clear need to counsel organizations, that rightly aim to produce videos showcasing their companies, on how to do it right. That’s because so many get it wrong. While creating online video content is a great tactic for improving search engine optimization and highlighting a company’s talent and products or services, when it’s done poorly — often on a shoestring budget with terrible lighting and sound, minimal scripting and generally lacklustre production values — it can have a negative impact on your brand.

And it’s not just small and mid-sized businesses that try to do video on the cheap. Even major corporations try to cut corners. This can lead to a nightmare scenario where your video does grab attention, but for all the wrong reasons. Instead of driving business to your company, it becomes a source of online ridicule and derision. Or it leads to a with critics lobbing charges of misogyny and chauvinism.

Trying to make a viral video is like showing up to a party and telling everyone that you’re actually kind of cool, and a pretty big deal. It’s weak, contrived and almost never works.

Congratulations to KWG for making a video that attracted more than its fair share of attention, though I doubt it was the kind of attention the company was looking for.

Dave Burnett is CEO of AOK Marketing, a Toronto-based firm that helps traditional offline businesses get discovered online.