I don’t recall that being a particularly bad (either in the “annoying” or “unsuccessful” sense) ad campaign. It became problematic and got pulled after an unfortunate incident where a mentally disturbed individual surnamed “Noid” took it into his head that he was being personally mocked and held a Domino’s Pizza shop hostage at gunpoint, but that’s not the ad writer’s fault.
I have this memory from when I was a kid, though it may be apocryphal, of a local series of commercials with the owner (not Crazy Eddie) of a regional appliance store or some similar business-- where he’d appear on camera, with wild disheveled hair, trying struggle out of a strait jacket, yelling “my prices are INSANE!”. This would have been SE Michigan in the…mid 70s, to maybe very early 80s?
I imagine there were many iterations of those types of commercials back in the day. Seems like it would be a staple of commercials for used car dealerships.
In MSP, there used to be late-night commercials with a guy named Oscar who sat behind a desk and looked like Jabba the Hut. He owned the company that sold the carpets he flogged and insisted on doing the commercials himself, always in a bored monotone. To spice things up, each commercial had a theme (for which he dressed appropriately) and ended with a little stunt after he said (deadpan) “Tell them Oscar sent you.”
For example, there was a Western commercial in which he wore a kids’ cowboy hat and vest, and fired off a cap gun. Then there was a Robin Hood commercial in which he dressed like Errol Flynn and fired off a rubber-tipped arrow that flew about two feet.
Excruciatingly bad, but not much else was on at 2:00 in the morning. 
Artists like to create and innovate. This accomplishes great successes. But it also leads to, say in architecture, buildings that are ugly or impractical but also novel, pretentious, conformingly non-conformist or deeply puzzling.
So what is a great ad? Does it sell a lot of product? The artists might consider this a secondary criterion. People, most of all the artists, allegedly hated the Mr. Whipple ads for Charmin bathroom tissue. But it was the best selling one for decades.
There are many terrible ads. But you probably remember them after decades have gone by.
That reminds me that once my cousin was asked by the movers as they were driving off where the nearest liquor store was. They ended up flipping over the truck. If “word of mouth” is the best form of advertising, they did very poorly.
Sometimes–if not most of the time–the product will sell itself. If it does what it’s supposed to do and consistently does it well at a fair price, people will keep buying the product regardless of how insipid its TV commercials are. However, that’s the case for an established product. Advertising campaigns are more critical for new products since, in addition to informing consumers about their existence, they have to make a good first impression. Still, after that, everything else depends upon how good the product is.
Many products are very similar. The real goal of advertising is to convince you you want or need the product, even if this is not a conscious thought. Lots of people prefer (or at least buy) inferior products if you trust Consumer Reports, say.
Yes, I do, and I didn’t buy the product then, and I still don’t.
So, by anyone’s except the “artists’” criterion, the ad was a failure.
I’ll see you those, and raise you Cal Worthington and his “dog, Spot”.
If the ad is there to sell the ad agency, then it did great (and a few really weird ads are for just that). But if it is there to sell the product, then that’s a big FAIL.
Sure. The goal is more to make you desire the product than actually enjoy it.
There’s a tedious series of commercials in which a weak-willed guy, in a grubby looking liquor store, is somehow shamed into buying a different brand of beer than what he wanted. Always by a slovenly looking clerk behind the counter.
The worst ever? Has this one been mentioned yet?
The one where they placed bonsai bushes in front of bikini crotches and told the gals to “trim your bush” is the worst. Otoh that “who wears short shorts?” commercial for Nair wasn’t so bad was it?
Also AFLAC duck was so annoying
You wouldn’t believe how fast I can turn the channel when the Invisalign commercials come on. Actually, the one with the school teacher is nondescript but the other two I’ve seen are just repulsive. The close-up of the girl with a mouthful of pop-corn all over her braces is just ICK.
That reminds me of a really tone-deaf Budweiser commercial from a few years back in which a woman walks up to the counter of a liquor store with a container of Buds. As the young male store clerk looks up at her, her face is slightly turned away and her long blonde hair is covering the part of her face he would otherwise see. The young clerk takes her to be a beautiful young woman and he flirtatiously says , “I’ll need to see some ID, young lady”.
To which she says “certainly”, sweeps back her hair to reveal a middle-aged face, and hands him her driver’s license. The clerk makes a comically disappointed look when he sees how ‘ancient’ she is. The kicker? They did a brief close-up of the driver’s license, and she was a year or two younger than me. Pissed me off so much I never drank Budweiser after that.
Course, I never drank Budweiser before that, either.
The 2008 Hillary Clinton Sopranos parody campaign ad:
Hillary: “I ordered for the table.”
Bill C., picking up a sliced raw carrot: “No onion rings?”
Hillary: “I’m looking out for you.”
Tone-deaf incompetence, which makes me sad because I’m a Democrat.
Ontario (Canada), at long last, has permitted residents to legally gamble on single sports games. It immediately caused a hurried rush of mostly terrible TV betting app commercials.
The most puzzling one shows a large dude blocking a smaller dude’s view of the television. He summons a foul-mouthed woman who is apparently a champion kvetcher to annoy him. Not quite sure how this is supposed to make the app more popular, guess they hoped people would remember the odd ad or he powerfully amused. (I get migraines.)
I’ve mentioned this before on the Dope, but this time I have a link: Any food tastes supreme with Heinz salad cream
Basically in the adverts something disgusting would be shown and then someone would put salad cream (for americans: salad dressing) on whatever it was and it would supposedly become delicious to them.
Some of the print adverts were apparently even wackier, but it’s hard for me to verify if these are real or not, I only saw the TV ads.
The ads flopped for obvious reasons. Personally, I couldn’t touch salad cream for years after that campaign.
Yeah, I remember those ads. Those were almost as bad as the recently short-lived ad campaign that flat-out said “Pubic Hair Trimmer!”
There’s a current commercial where a family with a new baby can’t find the fixing for a meal in the refrigerator, until they realize they can mix the leftovers with mayonnaise (which is what “salad cream” is probably called in the U.S.) and then they can have dinner.
Ugh.