In case all the recent Twinkie talk hasn’t been enough to turn your thoughts to a youth spent gorging on sugary snacks without a care, General Mills is hoping you’ll want to ride a sweet wave of nostalgia back to a past where breakfast included a rainbow of rock-hard marshmallows in your bowl of Lucky Charms. [More]
badvertising
Samsung Pulls Storage Drive YouTube Ad Because Smashing Puppies Is Frowned Upon
By 11.19.12
Who hasn’t wanted to smash up a piece of technological equipment in a fit of “My Incredibly Advanced And Amazing Magic Computer Box Won’t Cooperate” rage? Right, we’ve all felt crazy, so we get where Samsung was coming from with its YouTube ad for the new SSD 840, a solid state storage drive. But turning those computers into electronic puppies with sad faces as they meet their doom? Maybe not the best marketing move. [More]
Regulators Ask Mortgage Marketers To Please Cut Down On The Lying In Their Ads
By 11.19.12
The 2011 Mortgage Acts and Practices Advertising Rule prohibit mortgage lenders and brokers from making misleading claims about government affiliation, interest rates, fees, costs, associated payments, and the amount of cash or credit available to the consumer. Shockingly, some folks just didn’t listen. [More]
Advertisers Set Up Bogus Storefronts To Skirt Seattle Billboards Laws
By 11.14.12
You know those huge billboards you occasionally see on the sides of city buildings? In Seattle, these are required to advertise something sold inside the building on which the sign is placed. But one outdoor ad firm has found a way around the law — just send a guy from store to store (and some places that aren’t even stores) to sell gift cards for whatever is being advertised outside. [More]
Fun With Fonts: How Subway Tries To Distract You From Realizing How Little Olive Oil Is In This Packet
By 11.12.12
While it may look like something slapped together in an Intro to InDesign class, this vegetable oil packet from Subway makes for a good demonstration on how to obscure information you need to include but don’t really want people seeing. [More]
Home Depot Uses LG Appliances To Advertise Deal That Excludes LG Appliances
By 11.9.12
If you look at all the LG appliances pictured in the Home Depot flier advertising savings for customers who buy multiple appliances, you might be confused by the fine print at the bottom of the image. [More]
Samsung Encourages Galaxy SIII Users To Make Easily Shareable Porn On Their Phones
By 10.29.12
If, like many of us in the Mid-Atlantic you spent the weekend inside doing an inventory on canned goods, bottled water and candles, you might have caught the newest ad for the Samsung Galaxy SIII, which features a wife making a huge mistake in the name of love. [More]
I Hate Progressive Insurance For Waking Me Up Over And Over
By 10.24.12
Tegan is mad at Flo from Progressive. Arguably, it’s her own fault: she leaves the TV on overnight as a sort of background noise. This leaves her and her fiancé at the mercy of whatever commercials run while they’re dozing. A new spot for Progressive insurance that advertises their mobile app features the loud, prominent sound of a vibrating phone. Most TV watchers might glance at their own phones in confusion, but Tegan was asleep, and was on call for work, so when she heard the vibrating sound, she woke up to check her phone. [More]
Denny’s Is Really Hoping You All Want To Chow Down On Hobbit Food
By 10.23.12
Given the runaway success of the three Lord of the Rings films, marketers are banking that Peter Jackson’s return to Middle Earth with the first part of The Hobbit will be equally lucrative. Which is why you’ll soon be seeing an actual Hobbit tie-in menu at Denny’s. [More]
Pizza Hut Realizes That Offering People Money To Ask Presidential Candidates About Favorite Pizza Topping Is Remarkably Stupid Idea
By 10.15.12
At this week’s town hall-style Presidential debate, at least one of the questions asked by an audience member will be superfluous and about a topic many people deem unimportant. Luckily, no one will be taking Pizza Hut up on its request to ask the candidates whether they prefer pepperoni or sausage, after the restaurant chain realized that might be just a remarkably dumb idea. [More]
Sony Files Very Real Lawsuit Against Fake Sony Executive
By 10.8.12
You probably know actor Jerry Lambert as “Kevin Butler,” the man who has played the character of Sony Executive Kevin Butler in a long-running series of ads for the PlayStation brand. Now Lambert can add “defendant” to his resume, as Sony is apparently unhappy with his appearance in an ad for another company that features him playing Nintendo. [More]
Ads For Controversial Car Insurance Initiative Feature “Real People” From PR Company Hired To Promote Measure
By 10.2.12
Voters in California will soon say yay or nay to Prop 33, a ballot measure that would change the way auto insurance rates are calculated. Ads for the initiative feature real consumers talking about the money they would save on car insurance if Prop 33 were to pass. But what’s not mentioned in those ads is the fact that some of these people work for the PR company hired to promote the measure. [More]
Campaign Ads Are Keeping The Christmas Creep Off TV
By 10.2.12
Whatever your political persuasion, you’ve probably already had it up to here (imagine me holding my hand slightly above my head) with the campaign ads flooding the airwaves. But in the grand Consumerist tradition of looking for a silver lining around every storm cloud, there’s good news for people who hate seeing holiday-themed ads in October. [More]
IKEA Is Really Sorry About Deleting Women From Saudi Catalogs
By 10.1.12
If, like me, you are a collector of the various international editions of the IKEA catalog, you may have noticed something different about the version for customers in Saudi Arabia. No, it’s not a huge price difference on Ektorp couches. It’s a surprising lack of women in the photos. [More]
Target Creates “Shoppable” Film To Sell You Target Products While You Watch
By 9.26.12
Are you sick of movies that try to ruin solid product placement with things like plot, action, and characters? Do you also ache to see B-list TV actors cashing a paycheck by appearing in extended commercials for a discount retailer? Then the folks at Target have got the show for you! [More]
Ralph Lauren Is As Weirded Out By This Ad As We Are
By 10.7.09 — Updated: 6.17.16
Fashion advertising has a long tradition of lying, but this comically stupid Ralph Lauren ad seems to have confused the human anatomy with a box of Pocky. Unfortunately, Ralph Lauren doesn’t want to be mocked for its own advertising, so it started sending out DMCA takedown notices to blogs who have posted the ad—both Boingboing and Photoshop Disasters have been ratted out to their ISPs. Blogspot took down the pic from Photoshop Disasters while it investigates, but Boingboing has posted it a second time.
Skyy Tastelessly Tries To Capitalize On Absolut’s Mexican Gaffe
By 4.12.08 — Updated: 11.1.12
Skyy vodka issued a crass press release declaring their support for the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in response to an ad from rival Absolut that featured pre-Mexican-American War borders. We had no problem with the ad. We put up a poll. A majority of you had no problem with the ad. Not Skyy, though! They’re drunk with outrage and felt compelled to “[decry] Absolut vodka’s suggestion to redraw North [America’s] map.”
Copywriter Mom Uses Her Advertising Powers To Humiliate Son Via Classifieds
By 1.10.08 — Updated: 3.6.13
Here’s a perfect example of the power of the written word in advertising: Jane Hambleton’s splashy classified ad to sell her son’s car worked so well that now everyone knows she caught him with liquor in his car and sold it as punishment.
