3/17 - Bad Advertising

I had a class project over a poor advertising campaign but I felt the need to discuss this topic more in detail here. There are a lot of advertising campaigns that leave people confused as to why someone would run such a thing. One ad that scratches the surface of this is an ad for Reebok products. The copy reads "Cheat on your girlfriend and not your workout." While this is humorous in a dark sort of way, it does not seem like the best message to send. This ad sticks out to in particular because it does not appear to have any good intentions at all. With most bad ads, you can tell what they were trying to do but it can come off as distasteful and off color. Since I started at this University as an advertising student, critiquing ads has always been a big part of the curriculum.

One thing one a my advertising professors has said that sticks out to me is to never say something simply "Sucks." This sticks out to me because I agree that every ad should stem a discussion no matter how badly executed it may seem. One ad that I like to discuss when on this topic is a Burger King ad that pictures their seven inch sandwich. The ad shows a seven inch sandwich going towards a females mouth with the ad calling the sandwich a "Seven Incher." This ad does not work because it has a distasteful nature and comes off as misogynistic. Some ads that are aired on a large scale (Such as Super Bowl ads) can also have a poor reaction.

Before I go on, I would like to say that not all bad ads have to be offensive. Some of them are just too generic to get any sort of message across. One ad that exemplifies this is the 2020 Super Bowl ad for Turkish Airlines. For those familiar with air travel, this is a very competitive industry. The campaign in the ad is titled #SteponEarth, The subject of the ad is seeing the world. OK?? Every airline can help you see the world. There is no need to tell people this in this industry when that is already what they want to do. To put this into another context, if you are selling a Subaru, a car that has been largely popularized in mountainous areas, you do not want this to be the main message of your ad because there are many cars that are built for rough terrain.

One of my favorite parts of the Advertising track at North Texas so far was the account planning track. One of my favorite parts of this class, which was the most challenging, was differing one product (the client) to another product. I feel like this is the key to good advertising. Our client was Guitar Center in this class. This was a good client because while Guitar Center is already doing quite well, there is a lot of things many of its competitors also do that we needed to concentrate on. This is a good starting point when drafting the creative brief.

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