I am female, and I didn’t see any weird power dynamics. I mean, the guy is holding the girl down but that happens when the guy is on top and people are having normal consensual sex. As for the bored looking guys, I don’t really see gang rape. I just see models who are all, “We’re too cool to even acknowledge sex is happening.”
Ugh, yeah. Clowns are the worst.
Plus, if the genders were reversed no one would think anything of it.
You also have to look at that Dolce & Gabana ad in the context of their other ads. They all deal with themes of voyeurism, homosexuality, group sex, etc…
In the context of Dolce & Gabana ads, the image makes perfect sense. Even out-of-context, the jump to “rape imagery” is quite a long one.
I don’t buy the whole memorable is just as good as profitable thing. I think that’s just a fiction invented by ad companies to cover their asses when they make disastrous ads.
Chicken fries. Death Metal band with rubber chickens on their heads, singing/screaming about the virtues of chicken fries.
I couldn’t grab the remote fast enough; I still won’t eat at Burger King.
And ‘incredibly creepy, let’s not go there’.
The King does not make BK seem edgy, hip, or ironic, though I admit I am not quite the target audience, as I rarely go out to eat anyway.
You know, now that I think about it, I seem to recall when BK came out with the “I’d hit it” campaign, I didn’t know what that meant, either. I wondered why they would want to promote punching their burgers.
Mangetout said:
Speaking of Gillette, I just saw an ad for Gillette that includes a shot of one of those baseball guys (yes, I am clueless and don’t care) where he has a face full of stubble. Looks like Dr. House. Amusing coming from a company best known for shaving products. Now I think they’re reaching out into hair care products too, but then the guy was wearing a ball cap at the time, so it’s not like that was much better. Maybe other hygiene products, like anti-perspirant?
shy guy said:
An ad has to do two things. The first thing is break through the barrage of advertising to stand out, and overcome the dreaded state of anonymity. The second is that it needs to, at a minimum, not create negative feelings for the product. Preferably create positive associations. But the worst thing an ad can do is get attention so people know what the product is and make them actively avoid it. Bonus points for making your competitor’s product seem better than your own.
Burger King has been stuck in anonymity for a while, so the ads are succeeding on that point, but the issue is whether they are getting positive results, i.e. more sales, because of the ads, or if the ads are making people who might have considered getting a Whopper think “Wait, this is that creepy King place, I don’t want to go there.”
Ronald as a clown might not convey “eat my food”, but having the Hamburgler and Fry Guys certainly did address eating the food. Besides, McDonalds puts more attention into their playlands, and that is what kids want to go to McDonalds for. So they may not be marketing the food directly, but they are certainly marketing the stores as positive places and sending a positive message about the store.
The Burger King creepy King does not send a good message about the store or the food. At least not to me, and according to this thread, I am far from alone. YMMV.
JR Brown said:
Oh, I agree there are squicky sexual issues involved, I just didn’t jump to rape. Certainly voyeurism and gang bang comes to mind.
Freudian Slit said:
The power dynamics I see are those inherent in the multiple guy on one girl situation, not necessarily anything about forcing her per se, but just the inherent one-sidedness and associated mob mentality kind of thing.
enalzi said:
If the genders were reversed, I would be much more interested in the ad. 
shy guy said:
I wouldn’t have a clue who they are, what they sell, much less that they have other ads.
Mangetout said:
There is certainly something to be said for memorability. You want to break out of the abyss of anonymity, and get into public awareness. You want the customer base to know that you exist and have some idea what product you sell, so that when they start thinking about buying that product, your name comes to their attention. That can lead to sales, even if there is no specific recall of any particular thing about your product that makes it desirable, or more desirable than your competitor’s product. If the first thing that comes to mind for “fried chicken” is KFC, then when a person starts thinking about getting fried chicken, KFC will be in their head, and likely they’ll start thinking where the nearest KFC is, rather than trying to recall what other places sell fried chicken in the area. So you don’t have to have a particular positive message, as long as the people have a strong brand association with the product and do not have hostile feelings about your brand.
But where awareness advertising fails is when there is no strong brand identity associated. An example of that is the previously mentioned “Heinz America’s Greatest Soup” commercial, where they made the customers associate fun with “soup” and not with “Heinz soup”. Ergo, people bought more soup, but they bought the more familiar brand, Campbell’s. That’s where Campbell’s soup had the memorability win. They didn’t actively campaign for those sales, they got them gratis because the customers thought “soup = Campbell’s”.
Association advertising also fails when the branding becomes too associated with the product, such that the brand loses identity as a brand. Kleenex is an example here. Almost everybody I know uses kleenex as a generic name for nasal tissue paper, even if they are aware it is actually a brand name. At one time, I couldn’t have even told you another brand name for the stuff*, even if I knew it had a generic identity as tissue paper. This problem is most prone with new products that come out and people associate the first brand with the product’s identity. Kleenex, Xerox, etc. There’s no prior common generic identity for the product, so people are establishing what to call it, and if the ads aren’t careful to create an identity for the product as well as the brand, then the two will become conflated. Then people don’t realize the value of your brand over another brand.
The other place where awareness advertising fails is when it creates a negative association to the audience. Head On is probably a leader in this camp. Everybody is aware the product name, and that it is supposed to help with headaches, but who thinks the product works, and who would buy the product to try it, vs. who is going to see Head On in the store and think, “That’s that annoying product yelling about applying directly to the forehead. Yeah, like that’s going to work.”
Where Burger King and the King fits is a matter of debate.
- Now I can name Puffs.
If a brand/product that I really enjoyed started running ads I absolutely hated, it may not stop my continued purchace of the product, but if a brand I was lukewarm on (but purchaced on occasion) started a loathsome ad campaign, it may well be enough to keep me from buying from them…
In the Charmin ads for example, TP is all about the same to me, no brand seems much different than any other----If I really hated the ads, I would certainly find it easy to never buy Charmin, where otherwise I might select thier brand if not for the offensive ad.
I hate to do this but …cite? Some of the “facts” you presented are inconsistent with Wiki and other sites.
FTR I don’t really like the “creepy” King commercials but I like eating at Burger King…unfortunately they have all closed around here!
So…one could maintain that that particular ad campaign failed to increase their market share and attract a significant amount of new customers.
That D&G ad was hot.
It’s clearly suggesting a gang-bang, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not consensual.
I think “Have a Happy Period” HAS to be the worst. UGH.
I haven’t read any for Bing but I didn’t check the whole thread. Even so, it needs to be said again.
‘Are you suffering from surf anxiety?’
‘Well I wasn’t until I saw your commercial, I’d better stay away from Bing.’
Heh, well I have kids and if you are using Sponge Bob to market you product then it’s likely that I am going to avoid it. Sponge Bob is serious mind rot with the occasional literary reference thrown in to make it seem hip and smart. I hate it when people sexualize food or kids stuff. That’s not going to make me want to get that for my kids, it’s going to fill me with a half-conscious creepy unsettling feeling that I am going to want to avoid.
I saw that one too. It was Derek Jeter the shortstop for the Yankees. I was baffled by his unshavenness too.
You are aware that McDonald’s has discontinued playlands and has torn them down nationwide right? Too many kids finding hypodermics in the ball pit or something.
Sorry, but this is just not true!
This is the Straight Dope, please don’t perpetuate urban myths!
Well the tore out the ones around here, and they tore down the ones I was used to seeing in New Mexico. So clearly they are tearing them down.
They’ve been tearing them down across the country, whether or not the hypodermic thing is an urban legend or not, they’ve been tearing them down.
I loathe what I call the “Jamie Lee Curtis Poop Yogurt” commercials, where she counsels constipated women to eat Activia (?) and get the juices flowing again.
The latest one is really retrograde: a woman at poolside with a friend declines to go swimming because she was irregular this morning. WTF? This is like those old tampon commercials where women “discovered” that they could ride horses, go swimming, etc when on their periods.
So BK has:
Herb - Failure, massive
The Magical Burger King: in some ways more creepy than the present ‘King’. I mean, LOOK
I haven’t heard it mentioned, but there was also that obnoxious hipster guy in the early 90’s with the whole ‘I love this place’ campaign. Does anyone else remember it? I couldn’t find it on youtube at all.
Its interesting how older ads targeted McDonalds, it was a tactic to take when they were #2. But now Bk is what, #4? #5? Sometimes I am surprised they are still around given their massive ad failures.
On the other hand, McDonalds effort to make Ronald McDonald hip for adults bombed almost as bad as Herb.
On another line of thought, I thought Progressive’s present ad campaign was going to be mega-creepy with the first ad. But when they expanded it it turned out much better, I suspect because they let the woman playing the retail clerk role actually look & act somewhat more human, albeit a ditzy human.
Along those lines (some yogurt, don’t know which one) there is a young lady in a super market who grabs a yogurt and sucks it all out. Is this supposed to make me hungry? Turn me on?