Marketing is hard. Just ask Scott Hoy. With increasingly short attention spans and an increasing number of ads affecting people each day, having your message heard among the noise is a challenge. In order to make their messages stand out from the crowd, some advertisers have taken HUGE risks. Some have paid off. Others have gotten the individuals and ad agencies who created them in hot water. These are the latter.
After my last round of Marketing Fails, leadership questioned whether I should be allowed to publish another list. So I hacked the system and did it anyway. (The password is NoBryanz). Shhhh. Let’s just keep this between you and me.
Back for the third time, I present to you, Marketing Fails, and the lessons we can learn from them.
1. How to Celebrate National Women’s Day (Hint: Don’t be Sexist)
National Women’s Day is a South African holiday celebrating the women who banded together to protest unjust laws requiring black South Africans to carry an internal passport during the apartheid era. The day stands as a monument to the strength and courage of women in the country.
To honor this day in 2015, Bic, purveyor of the Bic for Her pen designed specifically for women (because, reasons), published this lovely ad:
The message is clear: be young and pretty, act as feminine as possible, but be smart like a man and maybe you can be the boss. What an empowering message to women everywhere.
Of course, I’m being sarcastic. Please don’t be mad at me. Bic was incredibly tone deaf here. The backlash was swift and the ad was pulled in hours.
Lessons learned:
- Sometimes, being tone deaf is a mistake. But if you make that mistake twice, people are going to assume things about your brand.
- If your ad is targeted toward women, at least have one woman look at it before you publish it.
2. When you appropriate a satirical appropriation, you get… Boats N’ Homes
Step Brothers was a Will Ferrel/John C. Reilly comedy that released in 2008. The tale of two pampered, wealthy, white, still-living-at-home manchildren becoming Step Brothers after their parents fall in love and get married. If you haven’t seen it, it’s exactly what you’d expect from a Will Ferrel movie with this synopsis. Once they get over their initial apprehensions, the two manchildren become friends, and decide to start an international media conglomerate together, something which neither has any experience in. To kick off their business venture, they create a rap video. The song? Boats N’ Hoes. The song itself serves as a satire of sorts—two wealthy white manchildren creating a hardcore rap song about the perks of being wealthy. It’s meant to point out how ridiculously out of touch the wealthy can be. So of course, it makes complete sense that, just a few weeks ago, in 2016, 8 years after the movie was relevant, Realtors at Intero Real Estate Services would release their parody version of the song:
More like Boats ‘N Groans, amirite? What do I even say about this? First, the music video from the movie was terrible quality ON PURPOSE. This “parody” is just poor quality for lack of ability to make it better. Secondly, the movie version stood as an example of out of touch wealthy people SO THAT WE COULD LAUGH AT THEM. Boats N’ Homes literally is that thing we are laughing at.
*Cringe*
Lessons learned:
- Pop culture references can be a great boost for a brand—if they’re timely and relevant. Don’t come to the table a decade late.
- Rhyming is hard?
- If your mom tells you how great you are at rapping, it’s only because she loves you.
3. Going all in on your brand culture is important… unless that culture is misogyny.
Huünen Beer is a national brand out of Chile. You don’t often find it stateside, except in some cases, but the brand does well in its own country. Looking to carve out a niche for themselves in this new microbrew-heavy market, Huünen has sought to brand themselves as “Beer for Men” in 2016. Yep. Oh no, I see it too. You know exactly what’s coming.
Get it? Men who have to do housework need to get wasted on man beer to do it… or else they’ll… menstruate? Actually, I’m not exactly sure what the message is here… but I know it’s misogynistic.
Maybe they just got it wrong once, right?
Oh yeah, no. This is one in a series of ads that espouse the “irrational nature of women.” The tagline reads “You live with a woman. You deserve a beer.” For any woman out there who has a man who thinks this way, you deserve a beer—and a better man.
Despite the pushback, Huünen is still just for men. Albeit men with Fabergé egg egos.
Due to the nature of its advertising, I don’t expect to see Huünen making a huge impact in the U.S. market soon.
Lessons learned:
- Don’t be a pig.
- Living your brand culture isn’t always a good thing.
- Would the advertising industry please hire some women?
About the author:
Bryan Aungst is an Account Manager at Martin Communications. He enjoys cooking, cleaning, and decorating. Huünen beer is not for him.
BONUS FAIL
From the front, this billboard for Republica Parillera Pilsner, a popular import beer in the Southern States, looks great. From the back, well, I can come up with at least one reason why that billboard face isn’t sold.
