This post is part of our Ads Gone Bad series. Share your thoughts and memories of this ad in the comments, and be sure to check out our other posts on marketing gone wrong.

Blending cultures is a particular challenge for advertisers. How do they appeal to one culture without offending others, who may misunderstand references and not recognize noted figures featured in ads? These are questions that Cablevision (NYSE: CVC) is probably asking.

To market its "Triple Play" offering (bundled cable, broadband, and telephone), the company hired globalWorks to create ads featuring the music and stars of reggaeton. Reggaeton, urban music that became popular with Latin American young people in the 1990s, is a fusion of Caribbean reggae and Latin forms such as salsa with rap and hip-hop.

Continue reading Ads Gone Bad: Cablevision's Triple Play doesn't play

Ads Gone Bad: Cablevision's Triple Play doesn't play originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post is part of our Ads Gone Bad series. Share your thoughts and memories of this ad in the comments, and be sure to check out our other posts on marketing gone wrong.

In 1995, Calvin Klein had clawed back from the verge of bankruptcy and was poised for expansion, hoping to jump into the top tier of mass-merchandised high fashion. Apparently, somebody forgot to tell the marketing department, which was happily rolling out yet another over-the-edgy ad campaign. When the offal hit the fan, it covered the whole company with a foul stench.

The campaign in question featured videos set up to resemble screen tests for low-budget skin flicks. Young men and women stood in front of cheap wood paneling, the kind one might find in the rec room of an 8mm director wannabe. These kids are interviewed by an unseen older adult, who asked them provocative questions and made suggestive comments about their physiques.

Continue reading Ads Gone Bad: Calvin Klein's amateur porno marketing

Ads Gone Bad: Calvin Klein's amateur porno marketing originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 10 Sep 2008 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post is part of our Ads Gone Bad series. Share your thoughts and memories of this ad in the comments, and be sure to check out our other posts on marketing gone wrong.

Thanks to our unfortunate history with slavery and the subsequent economic slavery imposed on minority Americans, we as a nation are very sensitive to charges of racism. So sensitive, in fact, that advertisers are often accused of such transgressions for the slightest intimation. Six Flags (NYSE: SIX), the amusement park chain, found this out recently.

The park created what I thought was a clever series of ads contrasting the humdrum routine of ordinary life with the thrills to be found at a Six Flags park. For example, one ad showed a lumpy teen attempting to dance, another a chortling woman teasing her cat with a laser pointer, both compared to gleeful coaster riders at Six Flags.

Continue reading Ads Gone Bad: Six Flags not so much fun

Ads Gone Bad: Six Flags not so much fun originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 10 Sep 2008 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post is part of our Ads Gone Bad series. Share your thoughts and memories of this ad in the comments, and be sure to check out our other posts on marketing gone wrong.

I have watched this controversial advertisement for the Public Storage Co. over and over and I take no offense. Spike has portrayed it as the most anti-Semitic "worst ever" commercial, but I do not see it that way. Given my father is a survivor of the Holocaust (Warsaw Ghetto and all) and I have grown up with many accounts of murderous atrocities and learned of, and experienced, many more anti-Semitic accounts, I think Spike is way off base with this one.

Continue reading Ads Gone Bad: Public Storage anti-semitic -- 'the worst ever'

Ads Gone Bad: Public Storage anti-semitic -- 'the worst ever' originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post is part of our Ads Gone Bad series. Share your thoughts and memories of this ad in the comments, and be sure to check out our other posts on marketing gone wrong.

In 2005, internet registrar GoDaddy.com made advertising history when its commercial showing a busty model struggling to keep her top on as she "testifies" before a group of politicians about the company's advertising plans proved too hot for the Super Bowl.

The spot was so racy and tasteless that Fox pulled it from its telecast of the game between the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles before it was shown a second time. How the network that brought the world such tasteful programs as "Married By America" had the nerve to pass judgment on GoDaddy is beyond me.

Continue reading Ads Gone Bad: GoDaddy's racy ad too hot for the Super Bowl

Ads Gone Bad: GoDaddy's racy ad too hot for the Super Bowl originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post is part of our Ads Gone Bad series. Share your thoughts and memories of this ad in the comments, and be sure to check out our other posts on marketing gone wrong.

One day long ago I found myself standing in line at the unemployment office behind a man with a t-shirt that featured a version of Da Vinci's famous painting, the Last Supper. However, in place of Jesus, Elvis sat in the center, surrounded, not by apostles, but country and western singers. Our society had been rather tolerant of parodies of this iconic painting, until the Folsom Street Fair went over the line, taking its sponsor, Miller Beer, with it.

The San Francisco fair is the culminating event of "Leather Pride Week," and the poster advertising showed a group in Last Supper pose, garbed (scantily) in leather, including dominatrix, a man in a leather dog mask, and many pec and bountiful bosoms. As you might imagine, the image didn't travel well beyond the SF city limits, and particularly offended the Catholic League, which launched a boycott of Miller Beer.

The League would not be appeased with a simple apology, either; it wanted contrition, for Miller to issue a condemnation of the more unsavory activities associated with the event. Miller moved quickly to remove its name from the poster and the event, and issued a statement, part of which read, "we are aware of other disrespectful activities, objects and groups association with or present at the fair which, like the promotional poster, violate our marketing policies."

Continue reading Ads Gone Bad: Miller Beer and Leather Week in SF

Ads Gone Bad: Miller Beer and Leather Week in SF originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post is part of our Ads Gone Bad series. Share your thoughts and memories of this ad in the comments, and be sure to check out our other posts on marketing gone wrong.

Verizon made an ad this summer showing a guy scaling a junkyard fence to get his hands on an LG Dare phone, only to run into two junkyard dogs -- chained and snarling pit bulls. Pit bull lovers didn't like the casual depiction of animal neglect and cruelty. Animal rights groups have been working for a long time to stop people from chaining up dogs in their yard, abusing them and generally using them as a street weapon.

Verizon at first insisted that it would keep running the ad. Then concerned dog owners got the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals involved. PETA first tried to talk with Verizon and explain why the ad annoyed people: the dogs in the commercial had ears docked in a "fight crop" and pit bulls are the most abused breed of dogs.

Verizon refused to meet to discuss the situation, PETA says. So they put out an action alert. After Verizon got 7,000 e-mails from angry animal lovers, they took down the ad.

See other examples of Ads Gone Bad.

Ads Gone Bad: Dog lovers not so fond of Verizon ad originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post is part of our Ads Gone Bad series. Share your thoughts and memories of this ad in the comments, and be sure to check out our other posts on marketing gone wrong.

In 2005, CKE Restaurants Inc. (NYSE: CKR) outraged both social conservatives and lovers of music at the same time when its Carl's Jr. chain hired Paris Hilton to shill its new Spicy Burger. It set a new standard of tastelessness that will be difficult to equal.

Conservatives -- most Americans actually -- find the fact that Paris Hilton is famous at all to be a offensive. Her main claim to fame comes from her appearance in a now-infamous sex tape. The appeal of her one-time hit show The Simple Life eluded me, but hey, I was not the target demographic. I am a 40-year-old married guy so I can't speak to her numerous other enterprises, such as the perfume Heiress. Her single "Stars Are Blind" was not as awful as I thought it would be, but maybe I have gone tone deaf listening to too many Elmo songs. Parents of toddlers will understand.

Continue reading Ads Gone Bad: Was Paris Hilton too spicy for Carl's Jr.?

Ads Gone Bad: Was Paris Hilton too spicy for Carl's Jr.? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 08 Sep 2008 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Bloggers weren't kind to Nike's campaign for its Hyperdunk basketball shoes in late July. Three printed ads produced by Wieden+Kennedy were blamed as fostering anti-gay messages.

Most of the ads depicted one basketball player dunking over another in vaguely homo-erotic positions (mostly with one player's face in the other's crotch) with 'trash talk'-type slogans such as "Punks Jump Up," "Say Hello," "That Ain't Right." The hot-button line was from a popular 1992 rap song, "Punks Jump Up to get Beat Down," by Brand Nubian. The song was a good theme for basketball courts but for one thing; its lyrics, which advocated violence against homosexuals and featured the line, "I ain't down with gays."

At first, Nike supported the ad campaign. But when bloggers took the shoe giant to task for its "ethical sloppiness," Nike and its ad agency backed off and decided to withdraw the ads "to underline our ongoing commitment to supporting diversity in sport and the workplace."

Nike's move coincided with an ad-industry-wide debate about the use of gay stereotypes. Mars, Inc. also pulled an ad during the same week based on its criticism from national homosexual groups.

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Ads Gone Bad: Nike hyperdunks its tolerant image originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post is part of our Ads Gone Bad series. Share your thoughts and memories of this ad in the comments, and be sure to check out our other posts on marketing gone wrong.

As a 40-something trying -- but hopefully not too hard -- to cling to an increasingly tenuous understanding of current youth culture, I can imagine how McDonald's ad execs made the perilous mistake that landed them on our list of Ads Gone Bad.

It was probably a gathering of 40-something copywriters in a conference room in mid-town Manhattan. (I just finished reading Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris, so now I think I'm an expert in such things). They were no doubt tossing around the latest slang that might play off McDonald's winning slogan "I'm Lovin' It."

Someone threw out, "I'd Hit It," and everyone pounced on it as a sure winner. Perfect for banner ads on websites.

But did anyone dare ask what it actually meant?

Continue reading Ads Gone Bad: What did McDonald's think 'I'd Hit It' meant anyway?

Ads Gone Bad: What did McDonald's think 'I'd Hit It' meant anyway? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 07 Sep 2008 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post is part of our Ads Gone Bad series. Share your thoughts and memories of this ad in the comments, and be sure to check out our other posts on marketing gone wrong.

At the start of the 20th century, two companies that would go on to dominate American industry were locked in a battle over which type of electrical current the country would embrace. The direct current (DC) champion in this War of the Currents was Thomas Edison and his company, General Electric (NYSE: GE), while Westinghouse, now part of CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS), pushed AC, alternating current, made commercially viable by Nikola Tesla.

To make his case that DC was safer than AC current, Edison conducted a number of public exhibitions in which he
"Westinghoused" -- his term for electrocuted -- cats, dogs, and cows using AC. He also had constructed the first electric chair for New York, which was used in 1890 to attempt the execution of William Kemmler. Unfortunately, those in charge underestimated the current needed, resulting in what was described as a horrifying display of cruelty, leaving Kemmler alive but badly hurt.

Undisuaded, Edison continued his campaign of Westinghousing all sorts of mammals. Meanwhile, Coney Island's Luna Park was puzzling over what to do with its elephant Topsy, who had killed three of her handlers in three years (one of whom had been trying to feed her a lit cigarette). When the ASPCA stepped in to protest plans to hang the animal, the owners struck on the idea of electrocuting Topsy. Edison made sure cameras were on hand to capture the tragic event on January 4, 1903 as 6,600 volts of AC dropped her in her tracks He released the film under the title Electrocuting an Elephant.

Continue reading Ads Gone Bad: Edison electrocutes Topsy the elephant

Ads Gone Bad: Edison electrocutes Topsy the elephant originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 06 Sep 2008 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post is part of our Ads Gone Bad series. Share your thoughts and memories of this ad in the comments, and be sure to check out our other posts on marketing gone wrong.

One could question whether there could be an ad so controversial as to harm the fortunes of haute couture shops. Certainly, noted fashion house Dolce & Gabbana has tested that hypothesis with an ongoing series of sex-charged ads, one of which caused an Italian minister to accuse it of inciting gang rape.

That particular shot, in which a nubile young lady is pinned down by her wrists by a virile male under the interested gaze of several other men, was singled out for its intimation of violence toward women. Other ads by B&G have heavily homoerotic content, and one, a tableau of soldiers posed around a particularly attractive male with a bullet hole in his forehead, has even been thought by some to play on the naughty joys of necrophilia.

Continue reading Ads Gone Bad: Dolce & Gabbana proves (yet again) that sex sells

Ads Gone Bad: Dolce & Gabbana proves (yet again) that sex sells originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 06 Sep 2008 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post is part of our Ads Gone Bad series. Share your thoughts and memories of this ad in the comments, and be sure to check out our other posts on marketing gone wrong.

Restaurant giant Yum Brands (NYSE: YUM) owns and operates several popular fast food chains like Pizza Hut, KFC, A&W, and of course Taco Bell. The Taco Bell chain features lower quality, packaged ingredients, frozen meats, and poultry, and all at low prices. Fair enough, it's a fast food joint and the food overall is okay-to-good -- depending on one's mood!

The Taco Bell dog featured in the advertising campaign that ended in 2000 was a Chihuahua, an almost rat-like creature. Cute? Yes. Annoying? Yes. I know because my family has a Chihuahua we call Gracie! The Hispanic community felt that the Chihuahua represented an ethnic stereotype. The dog was voiced-over with a Hispanic accent and the implication was very clear. Many Hispanics were especially annoyed because they do not consider Taco Bell's food authentic "home cooking."

Continue reading Ads Gone Bad: The Taco Bell Chihuahua

Ads Gone Bad: The Taco Bell Chihuahua originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 06 Sep 2008 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post is part of our Ads Gone Bad series. Share your thoughts and memories of this ad in the comments, and be sure to check out our other posts on marketing gone wrong.

If Americans are sensitive about racial issues, it's not without reason. Consider the Trail of Tears, or slavery, or the internment of the Japanese during World War II, and it's clear that we've breached more than our fair share of ethical boundaries. But, judging by the reaction to a Salesgenie ad that aired during Super Bowl XLII in 2008, we've also come a long way.

If the upset victory pulled off by the New York Giants in that game was shocking, so was the approach taken by Salesgenie.com's marketing masterminds. The commercial in question featured a pair of talking cartoon pandas, complete with Chinese accents -- a married couple, to be exact, and the apparent proprietors of Ling Ling's Bamboo Furniture Shack. (Click here to watch the ad.)

The storyline of the commercial is not too shocking: business is bad; nagging wife doesn't want to move back to the zoo; husband turns to Salesgenie.com for free sales leads; now, business is great! In other words, it's not nearly as appalling as some old, World War II-era Looney Tunes clips (don't click here if you're easily offended).

However, there was something distinctly off-putting about the Salesgenie pandas, with their broken English and their misspelled "Sofaz" sign. I remember seeing it myself and thinking, "Well, that's bold." It turns out the rest of the viewing public was equally unsettled, and the negative feedback was sufficient to result in the ad being pulled from the airwaves.

Continue reading Ads Gone Bad: Pandas aren't cute when they're racist, Salesgenie

Ads Gone Bad: Pandas aren't cute when they're racist, Salesgenie originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post is part of our Ads Gone Bad series. Share your thoughts and memories of this ad in the comments, and be sure to check out our other posts on marketing gone wrong.

Mars Inc., has made not just one, but two ad campaigns for its popular Snickers bar seem to sneer at gays. Mars, one of the biggest privately held, family-owned companies, makes many of the world's most popular candies: Snickers, M&Ms, Twix, Starburst (along with Uncle Ben's Rice and pet food like Whiskas), but both of the ads gay rights groups found offensive were for the Snickers bar.

The first gay-themed Snickers ad made a big splash in Super Bowl XLI in 2007. Two mechanics get so wrapped up in eating the opposite ends of Snickers bar that their lips touch, prompting them to decide to "do something manly" lest they accidentally catch gayness -- so they pull their chest hair out.

Continue reading Ads Gone Bad: Snickers tries to make people snigger at gays

Ads Gone Bad: Snickers tries to make people snigger at gays originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 05 Sep 2008 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.