6 Painful Ad Fails You Won't Believe Companies Didn't Notice
Not everyone can be Don Draper when it comes to advertising. Most of the time, companies are really just shooting in the dark, hoping to hit their target demographic as mercilessly as possible through a combination of subliminal messages and good old-fashioned luck. And inspirational ads are great because they make you feel good while you're being suckered into giving up your cash.
But what happens when your marketing team is so inept that your inspirational advertisement actually does more harm than good?
#6. College Catalog Inadvertently Drops Depressing Truths About America
When you're trying to make your university look more tolerant and diverse than it actually is, there are a few things that you'll probably want to avoid doing. For instance, you probably don't want to magically Photoshop a couple of minority students into a photo after the fact, like
the University Of Wisconsin did
in 2000. And you don't want to choose a stock photo that's sexist or racist, like the University Of North Georgia, which put out a catalog with a cover that accidentally celebrated only two kinds of diversity: white men in blue ties and white men in black ties. Notice the guy in the black tie came in second in the picture above.
"High-10 for the social status quo!"
Let's break this terrible picture down in a point-by-point analysis: To the far left is our lone woman, desperately trying to beat the forces of gravity and patriarchy. To her right is our sole black guy who is FALLING from what we can only assume to be an entry wound from the starting gun. The other guy is obviously having too much fun on the White Male Privilege roller coaster, and the fucker on the far right isn't even trying. He looks like he just got back from lunch at Subway and decided to sweep up a race in time to put those minorities and women in their place. And, of course, there's the salt in the wound tagline, "Why follow when you can lead!" Hey geniuses, you just ended a question with an exclamation point. You are not doing right by North Georgia in any respect.
Especially given the depressing statistics of
who actually gets to lead. (White men, mostly.)
Foot races are way easier when you start halfway to the finish line.
The university admitted that they picked the stock photo at random and has since removed the catalog from print and their website. (This was presumably the better option than claiming the picture was "a stealth think piece" or a "viral truth bomb" or a "brain-teaser from Peachy Puzzler, better know as the Georgian Riddler.")
#5. Singapore Anti-Gambling Ad Bets On The Winning Team
Gambling in Singapore is huge. Like, "second-biggest gambling country
in the world" huge, which lends itself to some considerable problems. Gambling addiction is rampant to the point where heavy restrictions and fines are placed on betting. That's why the
National Council On Problem Gambling
decided to address this issue with an ad featuring a kid named Andy talking to his friend about his gambling-addict father, who used his son's savings to bet on Germany to win in the 2014 World Cup. Unfortunately, Singapore handled the issue
with about as much finesse as a mastodon playing craps.
"So should we get back to the game, or what?"
"No. Pop said we should throw the match in the second half."
If you're sports-savvy, you know that
Germany actually won the World Cup in 2014, so Andy's dad is probably not going to do any deep life reflection anytime soon, and Andy has probably already forgotten about the whole thing, being busy with his newfound fortune. The next version of this ad should have shown that Andy morphed into the fat, rich man-child from
Pee-Wee's Big Adventure
while taking a bath in his pool-sized bathtub.
Eventually, the gambling council ran an updated version of the ad, featuring the same children, but this time with Andy lamenting his dad's decision to keep on spiraling into a gambling debt hole.
"No. He said, 'I'm going to ride this shit until they start taking fingers.'"
Wouldn't it have been wiser to just wait until it was over, then run the ad with the name of the losing team?
#4. Levi's Ad Celebrates All (Skinny) Body Types
In
2010, Levi's made the bold move of cutting to the chase by pretending that unskinny women don't exist. Most retailers simply cast thin models in their ads and assume that we customers have the imagination to project our own Quasimodo-esque bodies into their garments. Those companies usually don't add the extra insult of claiming, "Welp, these are all the attractive body types there are in the universe." Levi's cut out the middleman of tact and blatantly advertised their version of diversity with an ad celebrating three skinny white girls.
"Many sizes available, from 0, all the way to 0.5!"
What Levi's was
trying but failed spectacularly to say
was that this line of jeans offers different amounts of butt room depending on your butt needs. So three women who theoretically wear the same size could each find fitted jeans depending on how much junk is in the trunk. Levi's just adorably failed to realize that when the average American woman wears a size 14, she isn't going to look at three tiny women with slightly different ass sizes and say, "That one's just like me, but we are all equally hot!"
Thankfully, Levi's is working on their size and race issues by featuring several different white women with
different lengths of hair on their site.
