DailyDirt: Advertising Mistakes; Hilarity Ensues
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Advertising is a tricky business. Not only do you not know where half your marketing budget goes, but it's possible to waste 100% of your advertising with an innocent mistake. It's tough to try to make funny and catchy ads, and not everyone has the same sense of humor. Here are just a few examples of some ads that have backfired.- Automatically serving ads without a human editor to judge the appropriateness of the content can be a really bad idea -- especially when placing ads on news items. Yahoo News recently inserted ads for Express clothing on a news photo -- unfortunately the photo pictured a distraught man who survived an attack by Taliban militants. [url]
- KFC ran a commercial in the UK a few years ago that set a record for complaints -- because viewers thought it encouraged bad manners and mocked people with speech impediments. This commercial has held on to its record to this day, but there probably aren't many agencies vying for the title. [url]
- Pizza Hut knows its customers love pizza, but does a love of pizza correlate with disliking math? This commercial needs to show its work on how it arrived at its conclusion. [url]
- Kenneth Cole is trying to raise "awearness" with some edgy ad campaigns. But one of its billboards generated some backlash from teachers when it suggested that teachers' rights were at odds with student interests. [url]
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Filed Under: ads, advertising, awearness, backlash, commercials, marketing, mistakes
Companies: express, kenneth cole, kfc, pizza hut, yahoo
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Math is hard
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO0cvqT1tAE
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The web page accepted my order, and two days later I got email and a phone call. Whoops, sorry, we sold out of the size which fits your fat head.
OK, stuff happens, no money lost, let's move on with life.
EXCEPT that every damn day that same sports-logo-stuff dealer's web ads pop up on several pages I am reading, and half the time they are advertising the very hat I tried to buy!! So, every day I get reminded that I'm a little pissed at this company, because I still want my hat, dammit.
Apologies for the cussing.
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Idiocracy
It's beginning! Ow! My balls!!!
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I like Pizza.
I don't like Pizza Hut!
They play games with their prices all the time and they make more mistakes at the register than any store I have ever been in.
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More advertising mistakes :-)
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Chevy Nova
If my lemon was typical of the breed, that would be the most truthful labeling in automotive history. :)
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Re: Chevy Nova
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More failures...
The famous fried Chicken hub KFC’s slogan “finger-lickin good” when marketed was translated into China as“eat your fingers off.” Oops!
GEC and Plesssey had a join company in France which was called GPT. When GPT is pronounced in French, it sounds as “Jay-Pay-Tay” which is similar J’ai pete, which means ” I have farted.”
When Puffs tissue started marketing their tissues in Germany it didn’t do so well. The reason – Puff means “brothel” in Germany.
When Italian mineral water company promoted their mineral water Traficante it was a failure because the word “Traficante” means “drug dealer” in Spanish.
When Bacardi launched a fruit drink named Pavian they meant French chick, but when they promoted it in Germany the same word meant “Baboon.”
Electrolux had to take their slogan down which read “Nothing sucks like Electrolux.”
When Ford tried selling it’s car “Pinto” in Brazil it was a huge failure. The reason - the word “Pinto” is a slang for small penis in Brazil.
Parker pens slogan “Avoid Embarassment – use Quink,” when translated into Spanish came out as “Avoid pregnancy – use Quink.”
When Hunt – Wesson introduced their Big John products in French Canada as Gros Jos, they forgot to note one thing, Gros Jos is the slang for “big breasts.”
=)
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Re: Chevy Nova
Spanish words can change meanings with a diacritical (accents), punctuation, or a space. So we know the difference between Nova and no va.
Consider:
Pòrque = because
¿Por que? = why?
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Re: More failures...
That's a bad translation. (not saying YOU did that)
Embarazo is pregnancy. Not quite the same. Are you saying Spanish speakers mis-read the English? That's a possibility. If Parker would have labeled their product in Spanish, the translation would be Evita la vergüenza, not Avoid embarazo.
But I digress.
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Re:
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pizza volume
pizza height = a
pizza volume = pizza
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KFC ad is stupid, not offensive
Anyway, what bothers me about the ad is that it's stupid and ineffective. The hook (people singing with food in their mouths) is somewhat memorable, but the message they want you to take away requires too big a leap in logic. The food is so good that I won't want to stop singing a ridiculous song about it with my co-workers, so I'll stuff my mouth completely full of the food? Is that really what I, Joe Consumer, am supposed to remember?
The pacing is terrible, too, with a painfully long (5 seconds is VERY long in a commercial) sequence right near the beginning with one of the women humming (no information conveyed) while we watch a chip getting dipped.
And doing the voice-over at the end in stuffed-mouth talk as well? That's just wasting your VO and your time. And it, and the whole commercial, violates one of the most important rules of advertising: never leave your audience feeling the OPPOSITE of what they should feel. In the case of a food commercial, you want to leave them hungry, or excited, or tempted. You do NOT want them to feel revolted, thinking about all of the disgusting people they know who cram their mouths FULL and then try to talk or SING. Honestly, who takes bites that big in the first place?
Awful, stupid, terrible commercial. D-, try again.
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Re: Re:Unions
If someone has a problem with a teacher, then it is up to the parents to get to the bottom of the issue. 9 times out of 10 teachers are considered bad because students that don't like a specific one have not done well to behave in class and are subsequently punnished. Now, if you are talking about private schools, no problem. Otherwise you are wrong.
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Re: Re:Students' interest
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Re: Re: Re:Unions
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