Ashanti Doesn’t Want You To ‘Murder’ People Anymore

PR stunts are wonderful things. Well, that’s a lie - they tend to be pretty rubbish in the most part, and aside from the odd grandiose piece of artistic wondery they tend to highlight how awful the world of marketing and PR is.

Just ask Ashanti, whose marketing team decided it would be a good idea to encourage ultraviolence, if not murder, with fans of the R&B ’star’.

It’s a bold move, that’s for sure, but we can’t help but think it’s one that should have had a little more thought put into it before being unleashed on the world.

See, spreading people around a major city and making them stand as human statues to advertise a product - that’s a PR stunt.

A tame one, but it does a job. Flashmobbing and viral marketing - they’re both efforts that appeared in recent times, used for the evil marketing team. They’re not particularly spectacular, generally speaking, but they do what they have to: something a bit different that advertises a product.

While it can’t be argued that Ashanti’s recent stunt wasn’t a ‘bit different’, it certainly can be argued that encouraging violence and murder probably isn’t the best of ideas.

Different? Yes. Ill-advised? Most definitely. Did we mention that Ashanti’s recent marketing ploy for her new single encouraged violence and murder? No? Well it did. Just to be clear on that one.

It all started with the video for the single in question, ‘The Way That I Love You‘. In the video, a clearly quite-pissed-off Ashanti deals with a cheating boyfriend by, well, killing him. Quite a lot. In the face. It’s an interesting take on the situation, and one hecklerspray doesn’t find too far-fetched when it comes to the world of relationships.

But then the problems started - the PR types decided it would be a good idea to incorporate this murderous tendency into the website for Ashanti’s track. By incorporating fake news reports of a spate of murders, allowing potential killers that visited the site to choose their murder weapon and - probably most frightening of all - allowing visitors to send e-cards to people they suspected were cheating on them. As Ashanti herself told Newsday:

“If you have someone you think is cheating on you, you can send them an e-mail blast and customize it and accuse them of maybe not being emotionally available, or you found them cheating on you, or sneaking around with one of your friends.”

It’s clearly a good thing that a musician in the public eye is encouraging such mistrust, and showing people the correct way to respond to any fears or concerns they may have about a relationship. No more should we talk about things, come to sensible conclusions or possibly involve professional help: no, we should threaten, accuse and murder.

Aaaand, we let out a collective sigh.

Fortunately for the world, the insane people who tend to complain about everything, as well as some of those religious types have combined their efforts and got the bloody stupid campaign pulled. Normally hecklerspray would do its best to avoid these types, but sometimes you just have to side with the enemy to face a greater threat - namely, Universal Motown, who released this statement:

“Ashanti and her music have always been about self-empowerment and addressing the issues that are most meaningful to her. We stand by our artist and her creative choices.”

Which could be read as ‘we like the idea of, and actively encourage murder’, if you looked at it in that way. It’s probably not the best marketing strategy really, is it? But hey, at least it’s managed to get her some more coverage, which means it’s worked, which means we’ve fallen for it… bugger.