Know-How Exchange : Just for Fun

There's an international company that does facility maintenance, and they brought their indoor commercial landscaping and tropical plant services to the U.S. When I saw one of their trucks driving down a Houston freeway, I thought, "There goes one of the worst business names on wheels!"

Rentokil.

If I think of some GOOD marketing examples, I'll be back. (The bad ones are more fun and memorable, though.)

- Shelley

hi richard,

have a look at this funny ad from New Zealand, when it came out it coursed quite a stir, the even went to COURT of the word BUGGER, it was decided that the word was not offensive

https://files2.inspire.net.nz/Movies/Advertisements/Toyota/toyota-bugger.mo...

oh it is an ad for the Toyota truck.

Carl Crawford

I don't know if this qualifies as best or worst, but my vote goes to . . .

Mentos. The Freshmaker.

Their original ads and copy were so bad they were actually funny and lucrative.

Okay, I have thought of three good ones.

First is one that's been featured repeatedly on CNN's Headline News channel for a couple of days now. Jones Soda has released its "holiday flavor" beverages, including Turkey & Gravy and Green Bean Casserole. According to CNN, last year's supply sold out within THREE HOURS. See www.jonessoda.com to place your own order. Amazing how much free PR they are generating!

Second is the marketing efforts of Binney & Smith in celebrating the centennial birthday of Crayola crayons. Getting customers involved in choosing and naming four new colors was a great idea.

Third is entirely fictional, but I get a kick from it anyway. Willie Wonka randomly put five golden tickets to visit his factory inside the wrapper of chocolate Wonkabars, and the world goes crazy buying the candy by the case!

Shelley ;]

I agree with night_butterflyz - the Geico campaign is brilliant!!

APPLE/HP IPOD commercials.... the dancing silhouettes, the music download commercial that features the square dancers dancing to hip-hop and the hip-hoppers dancing to country, etc. etc. Definitely appealed to the youth.

M&Ms Christmas commercial - Santa and the M&M both faint when they realize that "they do exist"! smile


The worse for me - QUIZNOS with the singing rats!! Who wants to think about rats when they are hungry for a sub. It totally turned by stomach.

I'll post more when I think of them.

For best ads, I personally like the California Raisins ad, and the Burma Shave promotions.

I do not know how one could come up with a "worst" ad. The "worst" ads were run once or twice, and no one remembers them. In the Washington DC area, there was a terribly obnoxious radio ad run by Kemp Mill records - everyone complained about it - people would talk to each other about how much they hated the ad - but I still remember every word of that advertisement today. Was that a bad advertisement?

Some say New Coke was a fiasco - but total sales for the Coca Cola company INCREASED as a result of the whole program. On the other side, when Coke changed their formula, the staff at Pepsi declared a holiday and took the day off. What a missed opportunity! You know they could come pretty close to the "secret formula" - if they had come out with a Pepsi which tasted like Coke Classic, there would be millions more Pepsi drinkers today.

On the other hand, I seem to remember a few campaigns where the public outcry was so great that campaings were cancelled (e.g. spiderman ads on baseball fields would be one example).

You might have categories for bad ads: most socially irresponsible, most misleading, most damaging to the company, most racist or sexist, etc. (But that doesn't sound like as much fun as your flipcard of creative catastrophies).

I've noticed a lot of the "worst" ideas mentioned earlier are quotes from various sources (including usually well-respected marketing textbooks).

Be careful - a number of them are actually in the category of "urban myths"!

For example, the "Nova"; have a read of this article which explodes that particular myth:

https://spanish.about.com/cs/culture/a/chevy_nova_p.htm

A really good marketing product/idea was Ty's Beanie Babies (small plush animals). Ty's would release a certain amount of new Beanie Babies for a certain length of time, then retire them, which gave way for new Beanie Babies to take their place. They were really hot in the mid-late 90s.

A couple of other good ones that I can think of are the pet rock and the Chia Pet. Who needed those?? And yet, they were hot products back in the day.

A bad campaign that comes to mind is the Mentos Mint/Candy one. It's so goofy that you remember it though.

Jong's posting about Beanie Babies reminded me of another example.

Disney does a good job of creating video demand by releasing a movie title for a limited period, then waiting ten or more years to release it again. Demand gets driven by scarcity.

By the way... Ricky and Jong both mentioned a Mentos campaign. I'm not familiar with it -- is this outside of the U.S. only?

Hey Richard B,

Here is an idea that has both the best and worst idea all rolled up into one.

WORST Marketing Campaign Spandex:

FLESH FLEX DISTORTION
because we surely do not know the long term implications of how this possibly great idea will and has inflicted the physical anatomy especially how it may DiStoRt the body.

*RMEFP "RESTRAINING SYNDROME"
I think it's flopped in the category of recognizing potential harm it may cause in trying to restrain *RMEFP...*"Rapidly Moving Excess Fleshy Parts.

BODY PARTS DESERVE EQUAL RIGHTS
Furthermore it may cause psychological harm and impact the self esteem of individuals. Damaging the confidence required to "Feel Good" about ones self while choosing to entrap and restrain those parts of our physical anatomy that are begging to be "FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST...THANK GOD ALMIGHTY WE'RE FREE AT LAST, from the bondage of physical restraint.


BEST Marketing Campaign Spandex:

SEVERE BURN COMPRESSION
Compassionately for those who have endured great suffering from burns over the entire body a product like spandex helps to compress and support the skin during the healing process. This is a great technological break through.

Is there anything else I can do for you Richard B or anyone else?

Your Servant, Deremiah, *CPE (Customer Passion Evangelist)