Good Advertising and Bad Advertising
Tags: Advertising, Online Marketing, Marketing, Viral Marketing, Digital Marketing

Consumers have a complicated relationship with advertising campaigns. On one hand, the popularity of ad-blocking software bears witness to the growing ambivalence that online readers have for AdWords, commercials, and promotional offers. This has become an issue both for websites that depend on ad revenue, and for companies that depend on ads to bring in clients and traffic. On the other hand, research shows that consumers don’t hate advertising per se — they just want it to be better. Furthermore, successful advertisements not only win new customers to a brand, but sometimes go viral in completely unironic ways.

Bad Advertising

Not every company has the money to launch a multi-million dollar commercial. But by looking at prominent examples of advertising campaigns that failed and backfired spectacularly, it’s possible to isolate trends that marketers should avoid at all costs.

The Kendall Jenner Pepsi Commercial

In the history of bad advertising, Pepsi may have won a world record with its magnificently bad decision in early 2017 to launch a commercial that mysteriously tied its product to political activism.

The self-styled “short film” follows celebrity Kendall Jenner through the streets of a generic American city in the midst of a nondescript rally attended by hordes of armored police. Although the situation seems tense, Jenner wins one of the officers over by offering him a can of (apparently magical) Pepsi soda.

Pepsi clearly believed they had something good going on with this commercial. After all, it cost them millions of dollars to produce. But on the day of its release, the Internet’s reaction was so universally negative that the company was forced to pull the ad before 24 hours had even elapsed, and publicly apologized; echoing public sentiment, Time Magazine called the stunt “an inauthentic cash-in on many people’s unhappiness”.

McDonald’s “Dead Dad” Commercial

To promote its “Fillet-o-Fish” sandwich in the U.K, fast good giant McDonald’s launched a bizarrely contemplative commercial about a boy who approaches his mother to ask about his deceased father. Naturally, the two go to a local McDonald’s for solace, where the boy orders a Fillet-o-Fish with tartar sauce. His mother longingly remarks, “That was your dad’s favorite too.”

The advertisement was panned, prompting Twitter outrage, and an article on the BBC’s website. Eventually McDonald’s formally apologized for something that many considered “distasteful”, and U.K regulator Advertising Standards Authority decided to reevaluate its run after receiving traumatized reports from across the country.

Burger King “O.K. Google” Commercial

Not to be outdone by their competitor, Burger King quickly took on the challenge of irritating the TV and YouTube watching public with a commercial that attempted to hijack users’ Google Home devices with the wake-word “Okay Google,” followed by the question, “What is a whopper burger?”

In theory, a Google Home device would have answered with a description lifted from Wikipedia:

The Whopper is a hamburger, consisting of a flame grilled beef patty, sesame seed bun, mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato, pickles, ketchup, and sliced onion.

Users found the tactic exploitative and annoying; Google responded by deliberately breaking the gimmick. But before this official response, Internet trolls worked hard to manipulate the Wikipedia article so that victims would be told the Whopper was made of “100% medium-sized child,” “cyanide,” and similar libels.

Reactions to the commercial were so negative that — excluding news commentary like the one posted here — all versions of the ad were removed from YouTube.

Good Advertising

An advertising campaign doesn’t have to become famous to be successful — but now that we’ve talked about infamously bad adverts, it’s time to talk about famously good ones.

The Man Your Man Could Smell Like

In 2010, a simple thirty second ad began a long series of commercials featuring former NFL receiver Isaiah Mustafa. In a bathroom, Mustafa pities his audience for lacking him as a significant other, but assures them that Old Spice deodorant can help to take away the sting. By the end of his surreal and rambling monologue, he is sitting on a horse at a beach.

The commercial received universally wide acclaim, and is up to 53 million views on YouTube. This number is particularly important, because it shows that people watched this ad — and still watch it — on purpose for fun, not because they’re forced to.

Old Spice saw a 107% increase in body wash sales after the commercial launched, and the company did not stop there: 186 more videos were produced immediately afterwards as part of a “Response Campaign” just to field messages from fans of the ad. This campaign raked in 5.9 million views on its first day — more than Barrack Obama’s victory speech had received on its first day. Truly this is a level of consumer interaction most brands can only dream about.

Purple Mattress Commercials

Purple Mattress exploded onto the scene in 2016, to the tune of $76 million in revenue. Much of this success can probably be attributed to the integrated creatives who simultaneously manage its social media presence and advertisements. At 81 million views, the first Purple Mattress commercial featuring an “egg test” to demonstrate the unique structure of the product is already more popular than the Old Spice commercial on YouTube.

Other commercials by the company feature a mother Sasquatch explaining the benefits of a Purple Mattress in the wilderness. The creativity and humor in these ads is widely commented on, but another conspicuous attribute is the company’s dedicated social media presence, as evinced by Twitter interactions with ecommerce editor Samantha Gordon:

Chuck Testa

The holy grail of online advertising is to become a meme — not merely to go viral, but to actually become a meme featured in organic image macros across the web. In 2011, this happened to unsuspecting California taxidermist Chuck Testa after uploading a seemingly low-budget commercial to the Internet.

The ad represents an elusive balance of “so bad it’s good,” with moments hilariously awkward enough to be endearing, and the weird but eminently meme-worthy slogan “Nope! Chuck Testa”.

On first glance, the whole thing looks like a happy accident — a low quality, local commercial that became ironically famous. In reality, the camp aesthetic was completely intentional, and engineered by Commercial Kings, brainchild of self-made Internet celebrities Rhett & Link with the intention of going viral. It worked.