5 Awful Marketing Fail and How To Avoid Them
Creating ads, both digitally and traditionally, requires professionals to follow some rules that help them to build a marketing campaign effective and eye-catching.
As you can unquestionably imagine, being a marketer requires being able to sell a product or a service originally, targeting the right group of people, and possibly becoming viral for the creativity of the proposed content.
However, being creative or going viral sometimes can result in going over the top with the ideas for a specific campaign. One of our worst nightmares as marketers is to come up with an idea for an ad that not only will backfire spectacularly, but that will also go viral for all the wrong reasons.
We’re used to social pages devoted to mock and create memes based on questionable advertisement ideas, but the memory of lousy advertising campaigns go well back in the past.
In this article, we’ll see what points you need to focus on to build a good ad while avoiding to finish in the list of our examples!
What points do you need to remember to build an effective ad?
1)Be clear about the product: people’s attention span is generally low — and it has lowered in the digital era — when it comes to their surroundings, and rightfully so. What would happen if we pay a lot of attention to any detail around us? Unfortunately, for marketers, this means that when it comes to billboards, paid ads, banners, and every form of marketing you have less than 20 seconds to deliver the message about what they’re trying to sell.
The Example: does Herb say anything to you? If you’re wondering who Herb is, you’re in good company. Even back in 1985, when Burger King’s advertisement was going around, people were a bit perplexed. Burger King promised a cash prize to whoever would find this new version of the popular character Waldo in one of their restaurants, but they were unclear both about the rules and the goal of this campaign. They weren’t promoting a new sandwich or another product, so people wondered what was the Burger King’s ultimate purpose.
(say hello to Herb!)
2) Advertise your product appropriately: do not, I repeat DO NOT, use major social issues, like sex, racism and war, as tools to sell a product. Not only this is highly inappropriate, but it also results insensitive, and it will spark endless polemics, with your product getting forgotten at best or your brand forever mocked at worse. While you want your potential customers to talk about the product, you don’t want to be branded as an entrepreneur or a brand ready to use sensible themes, dear to your audience, to make a sale.
The Example: it would be too easy to point the finger at the infamous Kendall Jenner & Pepsi’ spot, where the Pepsi marketing department thought it would look great get inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement to create an Ad where Kendall, equipped with a can of Pepsi, would appease the world. However, there is an illustrious precedent, that at the time caused quite the outrage.
Words aren’t necessary, look at the photo and tell me if you think that the new PlayStation campaign went so well:
3) Stay Tuned: being updated about the latest news and trends is a valuable step to take, especially if you want to stay connected with the audience you’re targeting. A good marketer is always adjourned on the daily hot topics, and if some of them can be appropriately used for a marketing purpose, so be it. The vital step, though, is to research if the topic we’re interested in including in our marketing campaign is suitable for us and how this trend developed. You want to be extra — sure you won’t get involved in some drama, real or digital. You would be surprised at how quickly a bad ad can gain everlasting popularity. So, before getting involved in everything, understand what people are talking about.
The Example: after the NFL player, Ray Rice, was recorded punching his girlfriend, a debate sparked about why victims of abuses stay with their abusers. Women for everywhere created and answered the hashtag #WhyIStayed, telling their painful stories, and how eventually they leave their toxic relationships. Someone in DiGiorno Pizza’s marketing department saw this colossal interest about the hashtags, but they didn’t do their homework correctly. They decide to try to sell their frozen food inserting themselves in the river of Tweets with the (in)famous post: #WhyIStayed You Had Pizza. Can you picture the horrified face of the marketer after they realised what that hashtag was truly about? The brand deleted the Tweet and apologised, admitting that they didn’t check what that expression was about before using it.
4) Interact with your audience: your audience love to give their opinions and feedback, and for a business that’s the surest — and fastest — way to check how their marketing campaigns are doing. Moreover, your followers and potential customers want to reach you, either for questions about a service or to leave their comments or suggestions. In this ideal scenario, you need to move carefully, because interactions with your audience can backfire pretty badly. The things you should want to do are sponsoring news about your brand, letting the people know how values you root for, involving users and followers in surveys and special promotions. Want you must avoid at all costs to touch delicate topics that can easily sparkle a polemic. Generally, sex & religion is the holy combo to shun if you don’t like for your business to be associated with drama. Your brand should be remembered for the quality of its service, not because you upset your audience.
The Example: Subway suggested to their female customers to photograph themselves wearing their Halloween costumes, trying to look sexy while eating their long sandwiches, and then publish the photos online. How badly it went, you can only imagine! Not only it was sexist, as many customers pointed out, but it also was terribly tasteless. The company apologised profusely after the polemics sparkled and stopped the initiative at once.
5) Careful about what deals you offer: deals and special offers are something a brand should propose to its customers, especially if they already bought from you and you want them to become loyal buyers or if they are first-time customers. However, study and plan your discounts very carefully. You don’t want to lose profits while searching to improve your sales, so do the math. Even more important, offer the type of deal where you have complete control over it, not a deal that depends on casualty on your part.
The Example: 1984 is a year that McDonald’s will remember forever, and not only because their US team won a ton of medals. Before the Olympiads, the fast-food chain promised free items for every medal that the USA team would eventually win. What they didn’t expect was for the Soviet Union to boycott the Olympic games, in response to the American boycott of the previous Olympiads. The U.S.A. won 174 medals, and McDonald’s gave away from free so much food that some locations ran short of the most popular items.
As you have read, even the best marketing departments can make a loud mistake. In the Internet Era, however, this type of accidents risk to damage a brand for an extended amount of time. For this reason, researching the right professional for your ads is a move that can’t be put in standby. Yes, the competent professionals cost money, but it’s an investment you should do in order to avoid losing your money in the wrong ad or with the wrong people.
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