20 posts and nobody has brought up the infamous Hoover UK free airplane ticket debacle?
Even if you say a 2 to 1 excahnge rate, how could they expect to sell 200 dollars in vacuums, and make money by giving away with that 1000 dollars in airplane tickets? Volume?
In the late 60’s/early 70’s, Reader’s Digest Magazine had a subscription promotion which involved sending outa penny glued to a sheet of cardboard, as part of their gimmick.
They planned on mailing out millions of these “offers”, and ordered an appropriate number of pennies.
They were stored on the second floor of the company responsible for putting out the mailings.
All went well, until the floor collapsed from the wieght. The building was damaged so badlyt from this that it had to be torn down.
No one was injured, and the promotion turned out to be one of the most successful campaigns in the magazine’s history.
(Information paraphrased from a report in Vol 16 of “Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader”)
Regards
FML
I’ll bet this never showed up in “All in a Day’s Work”
Many years ago I was taking the required marketing class to get my MBA. Our professor was trying to talk about customer perceptions – unfortunately, he started out with the Chevy “No Va” myth and then into the Coca-Cola “Bite the Wax Tadpole” nonsense. Alas, this was in the 90s, so I couldn’t just point him off to Snopes to fight his extreme ignorance.
But then Professor Nitwit decided he had to go one further. Mind, the entire MBA program knew I was a chemical engineer (the fact that there were actual engineers in their classes apparently spooked the other MBA students). That is apparently why Mr. Nitwit singled me out to intone:
“For example, if I asked you to drink this!”
writes DIHYDROGEN DIOXIDE on the blackboard
“you would probably refuse! But if I told you what it really was, you’d realize that every day you already drink… water!”
That was pretty much the end of that class, as I spent most of the remainder of it excoriating the poor fool for not only talking out of his ass but for completely mangling the proper chemical name for hydrogen peroxide. I offered to bring some clear, refreshing “dihydrogen dioxide” in to the next class, so he could show everybody how he would have no problems drinking it.
A couple minutes of research in preparation (even in that pre-Google, pre-Wiki era) would have saved that man at least twenty minutes of acute embarrassment. But, no. (I got an “A” in that class, by the way.) (Not that this was a difficult accomplishment, mind.)
Wasn’t that also enough to deplete the entire New York City Area of pennies for a month?
McDonalds, 1984.
Had an Olympics-based game where you would win the following (if the US team won the listed medal):
Gold - Big Mac
Silver - Fries
Bronze - Drink
The game pieces allowed you to win multiple times on the same piece - if the US team swept the event on which the game piece was based, McD’s would give you a full meal for free.
If y’all recall, the entire Communist bloc (with one or two exceptions) bailed out in retaliation for the US bailing out of the Moscow games four years earlier.
A number of restaurants ran out of buns, and I ate very cheaply that summer (I was 17, so issues of diet and health mattered not a whit).
I don’t know why. The commercial went “You bet your sweet Aspercream!” in a completely gleeful jingle voice, and I thought it was hilarious. I’m positive it wasn’t a blooper.
Thank you for sharing this. Brilliant story!
(Um, they aren’t going to have to hunt you down and get you, are they? :eek: )
The Simpsons had a great parody of this in one episode with Krusty doing a similar promotion with his restaurant- except his was rigged so that the United States would always lose, since he chose events the Communist nations excelled in. However, this backfired, just like McDonald’s did. Krusty became so angry that he appeared on TV and said that he would personally spit in every 50th burger. Homer: “I like those odds!” (On the DVD commentary for this episode, one of the producers- Josh Weinstein, I believe- retells the anecdote, but keeps using the word “Whopper” while referring to McDonald’s. As Al Jean puts it, Encylopedia Brown solved the mystery- McDonald’s doesn’t sell Whoppers! Weinstein makes a funny rebuttal, but I forget what it was.)
This is kind of a tricky story to put together, but luckily our own rjung has an article from Top5 themselves archived on his website. Basically, what happened was that the Wall Street Journal had a little piece on a real gentleman who translates film titles for Hong Kong audiences, with unusual results- As Good as it Gets becomes Mr. Cat Poop, apparently since the main characters name sounds similar to the Chinese words for “cat poop.” This article circulated on the internet with a obvious humor list from the website Top5 of supposed Chinese translated movie titles. When The New York Times ended up writing about the fellow, they paraphrased the article in such a way that both the real and fake movie titles ended up in the same article. And this story circulated even more- I still recall Peter Jennings joking that the new title of Babe- “The Happy Dumpling-to-be that talks and solves agricultural problems”- is proof that communism is alive and well in China. But seriously, who is really going to believe that the Chinese are going to call Twister “Run! Run! CLOUDZILLA!”? (Writing on this legend in his book Hollywood Urban Legends, Richard Roeper joked based on the fake Crying Game title that the Chinese would probably call The Sixth Sense “The American Psychiatrist is a Ghost.” Based on Mahaloth’s anecdote, that wasn’t too far from the truth.)
McDonald’s “I am Asian” which somehow bizarre attempts to indicate that McDonald’s is essential to being Asian. I don’t know about you, but when I’m thinking Chinese food, I’m thinking McDonald’s!
“Where’s Herb”, Burger King.
Conception: Herb was a guy who didn’t like burgers. (Think about that one: a burger pitchman who openly doesn’t like the product). :dubious:
Execution: If you were the first to see Herb at a BK, you won a large prize. Oops!
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Burger King originally didn’t mention what Herb looked like. So customers started hassling other customers - good deal!
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The first few winners were minors, meaning that they weren’t eligible to win.
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The situation grew so bad, that some State legislatures got in on the act.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,961331,00.html
None of the people involved still work for the company in question so I think I’m safe … . 
I think that the target audience for those ads may not appreciate the insinuation of profanity - Aspercreme is an old-person medicine, right?
Joe
Oh, man, I’d forgotten the 84 Olympics at McDonalds thing. McDonald’s sponsored US Swimming events, so that summer they gave away free gamecards every time you placed in an event. Or won your heat. Or, heck, just entered into the swim meet. I had so many double- and triple- winners that I think I threw away the ones that were “only” single-winners.
Still, while it was a disaster for McDonalds in terms of profits, it was spectacularly successful as a marketing gimmick. Everybody was going to McD’s that summer (they just weren’t paying).
How about those Ballpark Franks ads a few summers back, with the chubby guy drooling over them being “Girthy”. I swear, every time I saw that mouthbreather’s ad he acted like he was admiring the hot dogs in a gay porn flick. “Ooooh – Girthy.”
Not the image I’d want my product associated with (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but maybe they were just going after a different target market.
Pitchfolk who don’t like the product isn’t anything new. See: Domino’s Noid (“avoid the Noid”), QUANTAS’s koala (“I hate QUANTAS!”), etc. Herb’s schtick wasn’t that he hated burgers, but that he had never eaten a Whopper at Burger King. Herb also appeared as a guest referee at WWF Wrestlemania, I believe.
When you’re trying to be clever in advertising, don’t forget that wise-asses- or complete morons- will take what you say literally if you let them. Case in point: an electronics store once advertised a television for only 299 bananas- bananas being slang for money in this case. Although most people knew what it meant, some folks- just to be silly- actually brought in 299 bananas. The electronics store obliged, and donated most of the bananas to the local zoo.
Then there was the case of Leonard v. Pepsico, in my opinion, the greatest lawsuit ever filed (or at least a close second to Johnny Carson and Carson Enterprises, Inc. v. Here’s Johnny Portable Toilets). I’m sure Pepsi would have given John Leonard a real Harrier jet if they could have, but as pointed out, the Harrier jet could not be used for civilian purposes. A spokeperson for the Pentagon joked that the ad “wasn’t the real thing,” showing the amount of research the government takes into cola slogans is the same as it does for everything else.
But some companies are willing to oblige- if they can. In his book The Verse by the Side of the Road, Frank Newsome, Jr. told an anecdote about a supermarket owner who decided to take Burma-Shave up on its tongue-in-cheek offer parodying outlandish sweepstakes of the time: “Free, free/a trip to Mars/for 200/empty jars.” He told his customers to give him their empty Burma-Shave jars so he could gain enough for the “trip.” Suprisingly, the company obliged: after some deliberation, they gave him a trip to the city of Moers, Germany (pronounced “mars.”) He had a swell time, and sent the company a Christmas card every year. So if you’re trying to be silly, make sure you can back it up- because some wiseguy will always try to see if you can.
What about unfortunate product names and translations, or cultural mistakes? For example, I read that McDonalds caused severe offense among Muslims when, as part of a World Cup promotion, they put the flags of participating countries on their bags, but Muslims took offense when they found the Saudi Arabian flag, which contains script from the Koran, on a throwaway bag.
When Domino’s got back into the funny-character-for-spokesthing game, they bombed terribly.
They had Bad Andy for a while, a teddy-bear-like creature that ran amok in the Domino’s store (supposed idea they were pitching were the new Hot Bags, delivery bags that had electric warmers in them to keep your order hot). Andy would take apart the bags and use them to make a steambath room somewhere in the store. As a customer, was I supposed to feel good that there was a naked, furry, mammal-like creature running all over where my food was being prepared. I think not.
Then when they introduced their new brownies, they had a character called Fudgem, a 3 foot tall brownie with arms and legs. He went on deliveries, giving hugs to all the customers that ordered brownies; he also left brown smudges all over the place. Gee, what other character on TV did this? Oh, yeah… Mr. Hanky, the Christmas Poo from “South Park”. For those of you who don’t watch SP: Mr. Hanky was a (literal) piece of shit that bounced around town to bring joy to non-Christians at Christmas time, leaving brown smudges all over.
Didn’t those ads also have Brighton from the Nanny in them?
Maybe they did do their [del]plagiarism[/del] research – was this before or after the SP episode where Chef sold “Fudge 'ems” (amongst others,) which also featured Mr Hanky