I have a hard time believing the controversial Converse advertisement was simply a mistake. Not because companies never make mistakes or because every controversial advertisement is intentionally designed to create outrage.

The question is: how does an advertisement make it through multiple stages of production and approval without someone noticing the message it could send?

An advertisement from a major company does not simply get created and immediately posted for the public to see. There are people involved in developing the idea, producing the advertisement, editing it, reviewing it and ultimately approving it. That means there are opportunities to catch problems before the public ever sees the final product.

That is what makes the Converse situation difficult for me to accept as an accident.

Kierra Thomas, a Martin resident, said the advertisement immediately raised questions about how it made it through the approval process.

“It is hard to believe that nobody involved in creating the advertisement noticed how the image could be interpreted,” Thomas said.

I agree.

If one person had created the advertisement and immediately posted it, an argument could be made that the person simply did not think about how it would be received, but that is not how major advertising campaigns work.

There are supposed to be multiple people looking at the final product. There are supposed to be conversations about the message. People should be asking whether the advertisement represents the company in the way it intends.

That is why I think calling the Converse advertisement a mistake is too easy.

Makayla Harbin, a University of Tennessee at Martin sophomore business major, also believes the process behind an advertisement matters.

“Companies have to think about every part of an advertisement before putting it out,” Harbin said. “If an ad goes through several stages before being published, it raises questions about how something so controversial could make it all the way through.”

However, Harbin does not believe Converse intentionally created the controversy.

“I don’t necessarily think the company intentionally did it,” Harbin said. “Sometimes I think the Black community can reach with certain things and see something as offensive when that may not have been the intention.”

Even though Harbin does not believe the advertisement was deliberately controversial, she said the situation still raises questions about the company’s advertising and approval process.

That question is at the center of this entire controversy. How did it make it through?

Maybe everyone involved genuinely missed the issue, or nobody intended for the advertisement to create the reaction it received. Even if that is true, it still raises concerns about the company’s decision-making process.

And then there is the attention. People are talking about Converse.

The advertisement has become something people can debate, criticize and share with others. Instead of being another advertisement that someone scrolls past, it became a topic of conversation.

In today’s media environment, getting people to stop and pay attention is difficult. Consumers are constantly surrounded by advertisements from companies trying to sell them something. Most advertisements disappear from people’s minds almost as quickly as they appear on their screens.

When people are upset, confused or curious, they are more likely to talk about what they saw. They may share it with friends. They may post about it. They may ask other people what they think.

Suddenly, the advertisement has a life beyond the original campaign. That does not mean controversy is always good for a company. Negative attention can damage a brand and make consumers question whether they want to support it.
However, attention itself is powerful.

That is why it is worth questioning whether the controversy was really an unintended consequence or whether it was part of a larger strategy to get people talking about Converse.

All we can see is the final product and the reaction that followed.

The biggest issue is not whether Converse knew exactly how people would respond. It is whether we should believe that nobody involved in the process saw a potential problem before the advertisement was released.

Maybe it really was a mistake. Either way, people are talking about Converse and in advertising, that may have been the goal all along.