I happened across this magazine ad today, and I have to believe that it was never intended as a serious suggestion by the ad agency, and never expected to actually make it to print.
The actual ad is in colour, of course. For the full effect, you must know that all of the elements in the pile are three different shades of brown. It is a one-page ad; there’s nothing cut out.
Given what springs to mind when the health benefits of muesli are evoked, taken together with the colour and relative scale of the discrete components of the pile, this ad seems to me to suggest something unmarketable about the taste of Kellogg’s product. The ambiguous lead copy and the less-than-enthusiastic expression on the face of the woman on the receiving end seals it for me.
Is it just me? It isn’t, is it? What do you picture happening just left of the frame?
I would like to see (or hear of) a worse ad than that. What have you got?
I’ve posted this one before. A few years ago, the Pork marketing council of Saskatchewan ran this advert on billboards in the major cities: Pork. The One You Love.
Of course, when driving by, that first period often got missed, so the advert was interpreted as, well, a slang phrase encouraging intimacy … in a loving relationship, of course…
I remember a series of cigarette ads that ran in the 1980’s. They were trying to send the message that “Benson & Hedges has great taste!” (Or maybe it was some other brand.)
The ads we pictures of plates of food with cartons of cigarettes substituted for part of the dish. So instead of an ear of corn, there would be a carton of cigarettes with two corn holders stuck in each end and a pat of butter melting on top.
Actually, it’s the fine print copy at the bottom of the ad that gets me: “We were thinking, why should tastiness stop at pecans, almonds, cashews, barley and oats? So we stopped thinking and started baking instead.”
It evokes a odd mental picture of a meeting:
Product manager: “Why should tastiness stop at pecans, almonds, cashews, barley and oats?”
Employees (collectively): “Um … well … uh … I dunno. Hmmm.”
Product manager: “Yeah, you’re right. It was a stupid question. Okay, get back to work.”
I recall a billboard campaign I read about ages ago (and have seen on the 'net since) about how this one company was much better than their competition. The important bit of the billboard said:
“We beat our competitors [picture of the lower half of a man with his pants dropped around his ankles] off”
Of course, on seeing the billboard your first instinct is to read the words verbatim, not solve it like a rebus, so your brain initially ignores the image of the pantsed guy and reads only, “We beat our competitors off.”
Microsoft’s current ad campaign is pretty bad. First they had the “I’m a pc and I’m 4 and a half” type ads with little kids showing how easy Vista is to use. Now they have the “I’m a pc and Windows 7 was my idea” where morons claim Microsoft stole their vague “make it crash less” type ideas when making Windows 7.
First of all the “I’m a pc” thing is utterly moronic. See, Microsoft, in those I’m a mac and I’m a pc commercials the actors were representing the systems themselves so it made sense. In your commercials the actors are representing computer users so the line comes off as rather stupid. And secondly the whole windows 7 was my idea thing… crashing less isn’t a new idea so the actor claiming Microsoft stole her idea on it just comes off looking like a dumbass and Windows hasn’t really had much of a crashing problem since ME or '98 anyway making the commercial even more ridiculous. Or the better media centre/touch screen commercials; right I’m to believe you flew some random nobodies to Tokyo/Texas to approve your designs because they had some vague ideas on improving Windows? Gah, just terrible ads.
Yup. You have to backtrack and reread that thing three times before you realize what it’s really trying to say – but by then you’ve already cemented the image of a corporate circle jerk in your head. It’s one of the first things I go back to for examples of “how in the hell did the entire marketing department, and whomever it had to be approved by not see that?”
Our local Coldstone’s has a big outdoor ad featuring a top view of their Midnight Delight cake. Every time I see it, it looks to me like an ashtray with cigarette butts in it.
