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Morgans Gets Giddily Vulgar

November 18, 2008 Street wanderers in New York, Los Angeles and London this weekend were treated to a guerrilla promotional campaign from Morgans Hotel Group, touting the company's new microsite, RecessIsOn.com. The campaign featured projections onto buildings of a video of edgy images interspersed with a three-word tagline. The last two words were "the recession"; I can't tell you what the first word was, but it wasn't "buck."

The video is at RecessIsOn.com, if you're curious, and here's the press release from Morgans touting the campaign.

I think the unabashed vulgarity is a bit much, but honestly, in my opinion, it's not even the most off-putting thing about this campaign. 

That would be the sarcastic and borderline mocking tone of the site's copy, as it pertains to the fact that we are, indeed, in a recession. A sample:

"Hey, it's only money, right? So why the mope? Easy come, easy go. But your pleasure, your thrill when you wake up every day, now that takes work. And what have you done for it lately? Thought so."

Am I the only one that finds this a tad distasteful? Thousands of people are losing their jobs every week—in fact, Morgans just this month implemented a restructuring plan to reduce operating costs by US$10 million, at least some of which will very likely include some staff reductions—and Morgans is acting like it's no big deal. 

I understand that strengthening consumer confidence is a key to reversing a recession, but it's not appropriate to treat an economic collapse as a big joke. 

I have to emphasize: this is only my frank reaction as an individual consumer, and Morgans could very well have plenty of market research to refute it. It's also likely that I'm not in the target demographic, which is fine. I hope the campaign succeeds in boosting Morgans' bottom line.

I just don't happen to think a recession is something to poke fun at.

Posted by Adam Kirby on November 18, 2008 | Comments (12)