This thread is for mocking advertising and slogans that were not thought through.
We all know the apocryphal story of the Chevy Nova and Spanish speaking countries.
Then there’s the classic for the invasion of Iraq. The Neocons wanted a strong slogan to promote their offensive in Iraq and came up with the title about it being a “Just Cause”, as in justice. Except nobody did a market research survey and they missed the blindingly obvious take that the invasion was “Just 'Cause” - just because.
The one that spawned this thread is a new furniture brand for a couch called “LoveSac”. Erm, that sounds more like a euphamism for scrotum.
“Let’s all go have a seat on my lovesac.”
A theme song is running through my mind:
The LoveSac is a little old place that
Hangs from my nethers.
LoveSac, baby LoveSac.
So what other ad slogans have you thinking, “Gee, nobody thought this through”?
Several years ago McDonald’s had a series of online ad banners featuring images of a person looking longingly at a McDonald’s hamburger with the tagline ‘I’d hit it’. Someone in the marketing department for McDonald’s really did not understand what that slang term meant.
UPS ran with the slogan “What can brown do for you?” for what seemed like a surprisingly long time. It was the very fiber of their advertising push.
Not a slogan, but I remain amused and confused that geckos and emus and weirdos like “The Mayhem Guy” and “Flo” are actually used to sell insurance. Rather than putting forth a conservative image and saying something like “we pay lots of claims.”
As an old Ad Guy, I’ve always been puzzled by companies spending millions of dollars to say almost nothing.
But when my daughter bought her first car, she chose Geico: “I just compared rates and coverage online from a bunch of companies I’d heard of”. So I guess it works to do random crap and put your logo up afterwards (but then back it up with lower rates).
eta: Reminds me of her very little brother seeing his first “lifestyle” commercial: "HEY! That ad stinks! They never said Coke tastes good!"
I’m amused by this commercial from something called BlueForge Alliance and talking about the agreement among the US, UK and Australia to build submarines. I’m not sure why they’re advertising to the general public (though I suppose it’s to gain support for the agreement).
Microsoft used the Rolling Stones song “Start Me Up” in ads for Windows 95, the first version to have a start button. I thought it was appropriate for a Microsoft product, since the full lyrics include the phrases “You make a grown man cry” and “She’s a mean mean machine.” Unfortunately, they didn’t use those parts of the song in their ads.
Well, words and phrases can have different meanings in different countries or even different regions of the same country. Several years ago I was having a discussion on line about stuff we did as kids.
Me: "My brother was in the Babe Ruth League, and I would get to watch the games close up because I was a “ball girl”.
Her: “What’s that?”
Me: “Oh, you just sit in a chair down the foul line and shag foul balls hit your way.”
Her: “What? Shag?!”
Well, out east when I was a kid, they called chasing down stray balls “shagging the strays”. What can I say? LOL
Well, the song also contains the line “You make a dead man come”. I don’t know if this was good advertisement for Win95, but I don’t think MS used it either.
We have a car dealer around here who, after years of jokes about his name, finally decided to embrace the humor. The dealership now uses slogans like, “If you don’t buy your next vehicle from us, then you don’t know Jack Schmitt!”
Concerning unfortunately named cars, I always like to tell the story of the Rolls Royce Silver Mist. When the sales department planned international marketing for the new model, fortunately there was one sales manager who spoke good German and pointed out that “Mist” in German means “dung”. It’s also a mild expletive always connotating something bad or useless, for “This sucks” or “This is crap”, a German would say “Das ist Mist”. So they wisely changed the model name to “Silver Shadow” and the sales manager helped RR to save face.