Reality check: Advertising encourages youths to vote using an anti-feminist

US – Rock the Vote has been rallying America's youth to vote since its inception in 1990. While the non-profit organisation normally enlists celebrities and is known for its collaboration with MTV, in its latest ads for the mid-term elections, it has tried a different tactic – anger.

In a series of five television commercials, people who vote – a man from mid-America, a rich conservative woman and a businessman – talk about why they vote: to save women from feminism, to save their businesses from kids who live in basements, and to keep the riff-raff where they should be. 

Cleverly using issues that Millennials care about – including environmentalism, feminism and student loans – and showing the exaggerated opinions of demographics that do vote and end up influencing policies on such issues might just be enough to provoke a group that is normally disengaged from the political process.

This advertising fits in with The Polarity Paradox, when consumers find themselves being pushed from complacency by brands using extreme emotions to wake them up. For more, see the macrotrend.