2010 Advertising Successes and Failures
2010 Advertising Successes and Failures
As the year comes to an end, many marketing departments are looking back at the year’s results to see if their plans were successful. With the new year and the Super Bowl just around the corner, advertisers are analyzing what worked and what didn’t.Â
One of my favorite ad campaigns was the Old Spice Guy.  I also enjoyed the Snickers Betty White ad. The Wall Street Journal had a nice article about “The Best and the Busts” advertisements from 2010.  This article mentioned the Old Spice and Betty White ads. I was curious as to the success of Old Spice specifically, as that was a product I had previously associated with older men and drug stores. According to their article, “Since February, the initial video has drawn over 25 million views on YouTube. More important for Procter & Gamble, the Old Spice brand saw sales double from mid-June to mid-July versus the prior year, a period when the social-media part of the ad campaign heated up.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE&fs=1&hl=en_US]Not all campaigns have been as successful. Some failures that were listed in the WSJ article include:
- PepsiCo’s Crunch Time Sun Chips Ad
- The Nike Tiger Woods Apology
- Gap’s No-Go-Logo
In the marketing courses I teach, we often discuss advertising. For current advertising examples of how to create a specific effect, I like a site called Adcracker.com. Check out some examples of advertisement styles by clicking the following links:
Dramatic Conflict
Problem Solution
Personification
Exaggeration
Metaphor
Employee Brand
Reasons Why
Related Articles
- Do You Like the Old Spice Ads? Of Course You Do! But Have They Been Profitable
- What is Visible Measures? Measuring the Popularity of Video on the Web
- Pepsi, Doritos and Betty White Are Crashing Super Bowl XLV (dailyfinance.com)
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YouTube’s Most-Viewed Ads of 2010 [VIDEOS] (mashable.com)
What’s in a Name? Famous Marketing Translation Blunders
If you are considering marketing your product internationally, there are a lot of things you must consider when naming your products or creating your slogans. It may surprise you to learn that some major companies have had some huge product failures because they didn’t do their research. Remember the Chevy Nova? That didn’t do so well in Mexico due to the name meaning: No Go. Once they realized this, they renamed the car the Caribe.
Here are some other famous blunders:
Schweppes Tonic Water translates in Italian to “Schweppes Toilet Water”
Coors’ Slogan “Turn it Loose” translates in Spanish to “Suffer from Diarrhea”
Pepsi’s Slogan “Come Alive with the Pepsi Generation” translates in Chinese to “Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Grave”
KFC’s Slogan “Finger Licking Good” translates in Chinese as “Eat Your Fingers Off”
Clairol’s “Mist Stick” curling iron translates in German to “Manure Stick”
The Dairy Association’s “Got Milk” ad translates in Spanish to “Are You Lactating”
It’s not just Americans who make these blunders. Scandinavian manufacturer of Electrolux created the campaign: Nothing Sucks like an Electrolux.
It has been said that Gerber may have made one of the biggest blunders, however, when they put a picture of a baby on their jars of baby food. In Africa, it is common for them to put a picture on the label of what is actually in the product. This has since been considered a myth.
Additional Resources:
Product Placement:Â Is it Shameless or Just Good Business