Selling Excess Daily Mail Style

The Daily Mail today extended their puritanical approach, newly fired up and raring to go in the wake the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand hoo-ha, to Carnage UK, a company which promotes themed pub crawls for students in university cities in which the students dress up in outrageous costumes, coat themselves in vulgar slogans and drink themselves insensible through a number of pubs. The Norwich event, which has evoked most ire in the paper, was in “Dirty Porn Star” fancy dress.

The article, entitled Degrees of Excess, is long, outraged and thoroughly illustrated. Some will read it as an attack on the company, but others will see it as advertising. The approach the Mail have taken is likely to create an own goal for the paper – it will almost certainly suggest to a large number of students that here is an opportunity to have fun.

The Mail, unwittingly perhaps, are selling the Carnage UK brand as the perfect pre-packaged rebellious night out for young students. The more the older generation froth at the article, the more likely it is to appeal to their offspring, who, like most young adults, are always looking for ways to rebel.

It was ever thus – the new puritanical approach is just business as usual. Outrage has always engendered publicity for the people the outraged would like to condemn. From PT Barnum to OZ magazine, it has been fulminations in the press that have given such happenings the oxygen of publicity.

To read the Mail article, click here.