Not anymore, anyway. They used to be, and that was why BK’s “Have It Your Way” was a legitimate way to differentiate themselves from McDonald’s. Back then, if you wanted a special order, it was a comparative hassle at McDonald’s.
Within the past decade, McD’s undertook a pretty expensive program to refit all of their kitchens (an expense which the franchisees didn’t like), in order to allow all orders to be made “on demand”.
I think this is a very telling thing. About the worst job security you can have is to be Chief Marketing Officer at a restaurant chain…most chains seem to cycle through CMOs every 12-18 months. And, the first thing every new CMO will do is to conduct an agency review, and scrap the old ad campaign – he (or she) knows that he has a very limited time to demonstrate his skill, and the advertising is the most visible example of it.
BK’s been with the same agency, and the same campaign, for at least 5 years now. That’s an eternity in this industry. If the company, or their franchisees, didn’t think it was working, The King (and, by extension, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, their ad agency) would be gone.
Here’s the Burger King from my childhood, sort of a cross between the Wizard of Oz (book version) and the King in the Wizard of Id. This cute little guy made the modern King even MORE scary to us early Gen X-ers.
I dunno what kind of combo it is, but Marcal TP is dingleberry city.
Marcal’s campaign is good, though. “Marcal-culate and save!” It’s dorky and it’s been around for a zillion years, but it gets the point across. The slogan always pops into my head when I see the stuff piled high on an endcap at the stupidmarket, and I think “hey, good value!” Then I have to remind myself not to actually buy it. Which shows how good that clunky old campaign is–it makes me reach for a product I don’t even like! (I don’t recall if they’re still running with that slogan, however. It seems like they’re focusing more on their green cred. And it’s not BS (bearshit?). They’ve been making recycled paper products forever.)
I do have a point…
I think one of the biggest causes of ill-conceived ad campaigns is the endless drive to come up with new campaigns all the time. While you don’t want to let things go too stale, there’s definitely value in imprinting a consumer with one message over years and even decades.
The ad campaign that completely baffles me is Old Navy’s “SuperModelquins.” The commercials are super creepy, and the print ads make it look as if Old Navy is just too cheap to hire actual models.
Any commercial that is just so damned annoying you want to strangle the person responsible. Best examples I can think of:
The Free Credit Report dot com commercials- Og knows how many millions they’ve spent on these things that have annoyed the hell out of tens of millions of people and are actually deceptive (that site is a pay site).
“HEADON! Apply directly to the forehead! HEADON! Apply directly to the forehead! HEADON! Apply directly to the forehead! HEADON! Apply directly to the forehead! HEADON! Apply directly to the forehead!”
Commercials that are clever and memorable but have so little or nothing to do with the product that you remember the commercial but not what they’re advertising. When I say “Whassssuuuuuuuuupppppppppppppppp!!” you instantly know the commercial but you’ll probably have to stop and remember what it was advertising. Ditto the “great cat roundup and drive” commercial that EDS aired during the Superbowl around the same time- great funny commercial, but nothing to do with EDS and just remembered as “that commercial with the cowboys and the cats”.
But that’s what the original expression means, and there isn’t any way to use that verb to mean anything significantly different from “risked.” It’s baffling.
IME, there’s two things going on there:
As I noted above, CMOs have the lifespan of mayflies. They know that they have to produce results NOW, or they’ll get fired. So, the moment that they see any data suggesting that the current campaign isn’t working, they’ll pull the plug on the current campaign (“come up with something new and better – fast!”)
When the CMO gets replaced, the new CMO will want to (a) make his own mark as quickly as possible, and (b) work with someone with whom he’s familiar. So, that almost always leads to a new agency, and new creative. When you work on an account, and your client fires their CMO, you know it’s just a matter of time before you lose the account.
Ooh, I’ve been contemplating starting this thread. There are two that really irritate me right now:
AT&T’s campaign where the mother constantly berates her children for throwing away their rollover minutes. Why would I want to buy a product that people discard unless an angry woman screams at them to use it.
State Farm’s commercial where the scruffy guy finds a door abandoned in the alley, takes it home, spends all day finishing and painting it, then props it up in the entranceway of their crappy apartment. When his wife comes home, he’s fussing in the kitchen, and he tells her the door is a promise that someday they’ll own their own home. Well, if you want to see to it that you and your wife own your own house someday, why don’t you go out and get a job?! That would put you on the road to home ownership a lot faster than wasting your whole day picking through other people’s garbage and fixing up a door that does nothing but get in the way. Even in the commercial itself, his wife’s reaction is as much perplexity as it is warmth.
I know some will say it was just a myth, but I remember the ad for the early Toyotas.
From the people who brought you Pearl Harbor!!!
It didn’t last long, but I remember it in a magazine (no not “MAD!”). Stan Frieberg wrote the ad and as I remember, he said he knew it was in bad taste, but was trying to get out of his contract with the ad agency he was working for.
I actually mentioned these in this thread about creepy stuff:
Even if it wasn’t an incredibly unnerving commercial, the fact that they seemed to be playing it on a loop wouldn’t been annoying on it’s own. I did stay & buy things, but only because it was the 1 time out of 10 I actually find things in there that I like and that fit me properly*, and I wanted to take advantage.
*I keep shopping there because the one time I do find stuff I’m going to buy, I end up buying a lot and getting a lot of use out of whatever I get, so it’s worth the fruitless effort the rest of the time.
From Uranus 
Even I knew this one was wrong and I was like 7 or 8 at the time. Jack in the Box’s comercial where the barbeque with a large rim for its lips talks to a kid.
<barbeque in a stereotypical “black” voice> Hello dere little boy. What be your name?
<kid> Rodney Allen Rippy
My stepdad says the one that showed Jack’s heads blowing up at the drive-thrus traumatized kids to tears.
I see what you did there.
I can’t remember an Old Navy ad campaign that I did like. That old lady with Harry Carray’s glasses and a dog was dumb and everything beyond that up to and including the modelquins is lame.
That’s pretty much what I see too, the song is essentially a love song containing a lot of weather references, but apparently some people think that it(the ad, not the song itself) belongs in a horror movie or something. One newspaper claims that 100’000 people have joined a facebook group called ‘I’m afraid of the woman in the Apoliva ad’.
And they sell oodles of the shit to kids and douchebags. So how is the ad campaign ill-advised?
IIRC, the famed Paris Hilton ad where she’s draping herself over a Bentley in a swimsuit (Thw swimsuit is on Paris Hilton, not the Bentley) to sell Carl’s Jr. hamburgers became very famous and yet did very little to sell hamburgers - because people didn’t know what the product was. You can occiasionally see she’s holding a hamburger, but there’s no indication as to where you can buy this particular hamburger. Only at the very end of the ad do you see the briefest glimpse of a Carl’s Jr. logo.
Is it effective? Probably so, but I just think that the ads capture a segment of the potential population that might use their product. It’s kind of the Drakkar effect. In the late 80s and 90s every teenage boy in America used the stuff. Now it’s hopelessly lost to that time and that demographic.
I’m sure Axe knows what they’re doing. But look at how Old Spice is rebranding itself… they’ve got hooks in young folks and the older guys who recognize the name from back in the day and find the new ads funny.
When I was googling for “rape” (yeah, I know, I have sick hobbies), I found this http://www.feministing.com/archives/006645.html from a while ago. A lot of people thought of it as a horrible pro gang rape ad, so I suppose it counts, though I myself didn’t really find it all that evocative of a gang rape. More like a bunch of models who carried the, “I’m really young, hot, and bored–why did I get out of bed for less than $10,000?” look a little too far.
There was an ad for White Wings pre-packaged cupcakes promoting them as snack for a kid’s lunchbox. The punchline of the ad was that anyone who made their own cupcakes was a stuck-up, perfectionist, control freak that needed to get a life. It aired for about two days before it got pulled; then they started re-showing it with the punch-line removed. Which meant the ad didn’t even make sense any more. I guess they had their campaign all set up, and didn’t have time to come up with a brand new TV ad.
An ill-conceived TV ad that I remember was for a chewing tobacco product. I don’t remember the brand name, but I don’t believe it was a mainstream brand. This was in the late 70’s, early 80’s and there was no cursing on USA TV (because NYPD Blue hadn’t been invented yet).
The scene: Rugged cowboy resembling Charles Bronson in a ranch setting.
Cowboy: [Brand Name]. One hell of a chew. Says it right there on the bag.
Close-up of the tobacco pouch. Indeed, it reads “[Brand Name]: One hell of a chew.”
Cowboy: [Brand Name]. One hell of a chew.
Something like that. It couldn’t have been more than a 15 or 20 second spot.
I saw that ad exactly twice within a couple of days and then it vanished forever. I suspect that it was yanked because of the cussin’.
[spits]
pTING!