DailyDirt: Advertising Is Content, And It's Often Better When It's Amusing

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Advertising is a difficult business. Companies want to make people aware of their products, but not everyone wants to be bombarded by various offers for products that they might not want or need. For consumer goods, it's sometimes possible to avoid being annoying by making ads that are amusing -- so the audience at least gets a laugh or some entertainment value out of the experience. Here are just a few examples of promotional campaigns that might be somewhat humorous.

• Ten years ago, Burger King introduced its Subservient Chicken campaign which allowed internet users to control the actions of a guy dressed up in a chicken suit. It was brilliantly engaging for 2004. Kids today might not care about watching a guy in a chicken suit do push-ups on command, but sequels are always a good idea, right? [url]
• Ever run out of reading material while on a long flight? SkyMall magazines can waste some time and introduce you to some products you'd ever encountered before. But what if the product descriptions were a bit more honest (and funny)? [url]
• A Craigslist ad for a generously "fair condition" 1996 Nissan Maxima GLE got the attention of some folks at Nissan, so they bought the car, restored it, and placed it on display at Nissan headquarters in Franklin, Tennessee. The Craigslist ad was kinda funny, but what's the message from Nissan? We take pride in all of our cars? Our cars clean up nice, even after almost two decades? [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: ads, advertising, content, funny, maxima, promotions, subservient chicken, viral ads
Companies: burger king, craigslist, nissan, skymall