Now that consumers can talk back to brands, it's a lot easier to gauge the response to your advertising -- for better or worse. It's also easier to learn from others' mistakes.
Interactive ad campaigns that miss the mark are as common as skid marks in winter. While failures are always costly, high-profile missteps can be particularly hazardous to a marketer's bottom line. We took a look at six 2008 campaigns that fomented outrage to see where they went wrong. And while it may not be fair to call any of these campaigns flops -- after all, all of these ads got the blogosphere buzzing, with mainstream media coverage as well -- we
can tell you how to do better.
1. Brokeback Snickers
TBWA\Chiat\Day's Super Bowl commercial for Snickers, in which two grimy car mechanics are horrified at finding themselves unexpectedly lip-to-lip, was arguably a spoof of macho attitudes. But neither the Human Rights Campaign nor the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation thought so, calling it demeaning -- and calling for a boycott. Snickers' online component of the campaign made things worse.
Viewers could go online to choose alternate endings, which were darker and more violent than the TV version, in which the guys pull out their chest hair in an effort to "do something manly." Online, you could watch one mechanic slam a car's hood down on the other's head or hit a brutal belly blow with a wrench. Ouch! Bonus content included candid videos of the Super Bowl players going, "Eeeoouuu" when the mechanics' mouths touch.
Activists called for a boycott, amid global press coverage of the company's homophobia, not the yumminess of its product. Mars took down the website.
Okay, so the offending Super Bowl spot was way back in 2007, right? Lesson learned, right? Nope. Mars was back this past July with a TV spot in which a slender male race-walker in teensy yellow shorts is harassed by Mr. T and told to "run like a real man" and "get some nuts." The ad was promptly pulled following a new swell of protest. However, thanks to the miracle of viral media, the spot lives on via YouTube.
What we can learn
1. If you're going to engage in conversation with your customers, listen to what they say.
2. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.
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