Hasta La Creative!

This one will go down as one of the worst examples of newsjacking since newsjacking was invented. Or, maybe since anything was invented. The idiocy is simply incomprehensible. TeamWork Online, some kind of sports industry job network, thought it might be a good idea to riff off the Malaysian Airlines flight 370 disappearance.

For it’s weekly Coaching Tip, the site wrote, “Malaysian Airlines 370 has vanished. Do you feel like employers can’t find you? Let’s get your ‘black box’ engaged. Let’s start the ‘pings.’ ‘Here are some tips on how to get noticed in a very crowded job market’ says Buffy Filippell, TeamWork Online Founder.”

When UnMarketing’s Scott Stratten called the brand out for its idiocy, they replied, “We meant no disrespect. Within minutes of noticing this we changed reference in the emails.” To which, Stratten replied, “Noticing it? It wasn’t a typo.”

Every brand wants its shining marketing moment in which it deftly leverages current culture or news in it communications but the utter lack of common sense displayed in this case is beyond belief.

You stay classy @teamworkonline (pic via Reddit) pic.twitter.com/pZU4jlqXli

— Scott Stratten (@unmarketing) March 19, 2014

Yes, it’s dumb. But somehow it almost manages to be funny. In the style of the late night infomercial, this EmpireCovers ad pulls out all the cheesy stops. Cheesy dialog. Cheesy sound effects. Cheesy lighting. Cheesy acting.

Go ahead. Give it a watch. It will make you feel much better about what you’re working on right at this moment.

Coca-Cola is in a bit of hot water over a bilingual promotion in Canada which resulted in “You Retard” being printed on Vitaminwater bottle caps. The bottle cap was found by Blake Loates whose sister, Fiona, has cerebral palsy. Fiona’s father, Doug Loates was angered and wrote a scathing letter to Coke.

In the letter, Loates wrote in part,”The R-word is considered a swear word in our family. What would YOU do if you opened up your bottle of Vitamin Water and on the bottom of the lid it read, ‘YOU RETARD? I bet you’d be pissed if you had a Fiona in your life! … Can you imagine if SHE [Fiona] had opened this bottle???”

Coke responded by pausing the promotion, explaining that the words were reviewed from the perspective of French speakers and issued a brief statement saying,”We did not mean to offend at all. We are certainly very apologetic for this oversight.”

Apparently the word was used because in French “retard” means “late.” Coke is drafting a formal apology to the Loates family. The letter Doug Loates is below.

Coke Letter

Hauling out one of the most over-used stereotypes, Saatchi & Saatchi Bogota has barfed up this lame excuse for a commercial touting the power of a pearly white smile. The commercial, for Trident Total Gum, plays off the old stereotype that all a woman has to do to get out of a ticket is flash a smile and bat her eyelashes. And that’s all this woman, who is extremely parking-challenged, has to do to fend off a ticket-wielding police officer.

And that’s all there is to say about that.

This is, perhaps the worst and most annoying “stunt commercial” ever created. TBWA/G1, rather than create your typical virtual test drive video for the Nissan Note, came up with a scenario in which either a bride or a groom bails on their wedding and gets picked up by a person taking the Note for a test drive. What ensues is some of the most grating, insipid, and utterly silly acting we have ever seen in a commercial of any type.

As you watch each of two video (one for the bailing groom and one for the bailing bride) you come to realize it’s not these two who are saving themselves from a life of misery; it’s their betrothed who are escaping unscathed.

Bride:

Groom:

Here is, perhaps, the dumbest Halloween-themed ad you will ever see in your life. It’s cheesy, illogical and, well, just stupid. Yes, it follows the tried and true approach of people helping others when they really shouldn’t but this effort is so lame you can’t even get to the notion it’s supposed to be funny.

Created by aftermarket additive brand Gold Eagle in partnership with crowdsource video company, Poptent, the spot, Chainsaw Psycho, aims to spoof the 1974 cult classic, Chainsaw Massacre. But all we get is further proof crowdsourcing always results in lame-ass, unprofessional work that should never see the light of day.

We are told in developing the ad’s concept, Poptent community member, Matthew Ninaber and his team at High Rise Studio in Ontario aimed to “convey the idea of a ticking time-bomb” and the “need to get a motor started ASAP.”

But, as any normal viewer will conclude after watching this painful, gouge-your eyes-out piece of tripe, the only thing that needs to happen ASAP is for the idiotic doofus in this commercial to get up and run for his life…and for these high Rise Studio guys to never again create another disaster like this in their lives.

div class=”imageleft”a href=”http://www.adrants.com/images/crowdsourcing-cartoon1.jpeg”img alt=”crowdsourcing-cartoon1.jpeg” src=”http://www.adrants.com/images/crowdsourcing-cartoon1-thumb.jpeg” width=”150″ height=”108″ //a/div

You have got to be kidding. This has to be a joke, right?
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div class=”imageleft”img alt=”coke_quest.jpg” src=”http://www.adrants.com/images/coke_quest.jpg” width=”150″ height=”85″ //div

Haven’t we all had enough of these stupid commercials that promise you the world if only you drink a Coke?
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div class=”imageleft”a href=”http://www.adrants.com/images/earl_tiger_woods.jpg”img alt=”earl_tiger_woods.jpg” src=”http://www.adrants.com/images/earl_tiger_woods-thumb.jpg” width=”150″ height=”112″ //a/div

The audio used for the Earl and Tiger Woods ad was taken from a 2004 interview of Earl Woods during which he was talking about his wife Kultida, not Tiger.
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If you’re going to make a spoof, at last try to make it funny.
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