Entries Tagged as 'bad strategy'

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

Metro Man vs. Iron Man

Remember Iron Man?
You know, the little Marvel Studios franchise about a charming-yet-ironic 21st-century superhero played by Robert Downey Jr.? You might have heard about it. Considering the two films have cumulatively grossed over a billion dollars in worldwide box office sales so far, it’s highly probable that you’ve even seen it. You couldn’t miss it.
Oh?
Really?
Somehow you [...]

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

The Best Advertising Commentary You Have Ever Read. Ever.

I don’t usually repost other people’s advertising commentary, but in this case it’s about an ad that I also happened to see at the same time as the author (left), but was unable to look at it long enough to articulate my own reaction due to the reasons described below. It was written by Jason [...]

Monday, September 28th, 2009

New Buick Campaign Makes Brand Sound Like An Asshole

Maybe this is a good idea if you’re deliberately trying to speak to that coveted douchebag demographic, but otherwise, this just comes off sounding like the advertising equivalent of thinking that knocking the popular kid will somehow earn you friends at school. You just end up sounding like a jerk.

Who Okay-ed this? If you [...]

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

What A Difference Three Years Makes

Back in early 2006, Chevy tried to get on the whole “consumer generated content” bandwagon (or bandSUV, I suppose), with a website which allowed users to easily create their own “ads” for the Chevy Tahoe using provided video and music assets. In theory, the idea was to generate interest in the vehicle through user created [...]

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

Google bless you!

Just a quick post to let you know our new Google overlords must have officially arrived, according to this ad:

Taking over from the exiting party which has heretofore been responsible for bestowing the bless-age, and to whom all unanswered questions had previously been directed, the new ephemeral, universal, entity that apparently has $5,000-a-month jobs for [...]

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

how not to use condoms

I know the Trojan “Evolve” Campaign has been going on for a while now, but just recently something occurred to me that I hadn’t quite realized about it before.
The campaign started out last June, with the premiere of a commercial featuring women being hit on by a bar full of anthropomorphized pigs. It’s only when [...]

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008

lame ad. great mashup.

This is tripping me out. I was just going to write a quick post about how terrifically lame I think the outdoor ads for The Day The Earth Stood Still are. It’s basically just a stock-photo image of the Earth’s curvature, against a black outer-space backdrop, with big, block-y, white letters that read: “THEY’RE HERE. [...]

Saturday, September 13th, 2008

the next stage in the evolution of alternative marketing

Monday, September 8th, 2008

you are not our fans… are you?

Beatles fans Vs British police.

Right after writing about how cool I thought it would be to bring fictional characters to life on social media, I discovered that the employees of Sterling Cooper, the Madison Ave. advertising agency where the characters on AMC’s series Mad Men work, were all up on Twitter. For anyone unfamiliar, Twitter.com [...]

Monday, January 28th, 2008

a trend’s success

“Is The Tipping Point Toast?” asks the recent FastCompany article in which researcher duncan watts talks about his findings (and their less than exuberant reception) that expose the billion dollars a year marketers spend targeting “influentials” as a waste of money.
i am constantly repeating the phrase that “we buy the brands and products that we [...]