The kind of thing which makes you say “how could they possibly have thought this was a good idea?”

  • Mohamed@lemmy.ca
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    12 hours ago

    Decades ago, Coca-Cola was trying to enter the market in Saudi Arabia. They ran an ad where “pilgrims” walked around a giant coke bottle, in the same way that Muslim pilgrims in Mecca walk around the Kaaba during Hajj and Umrah. It was very, very poorly received, to say the least, and many attribute it as the main reason why Pepsi has dominated the market instead of Coca-Cola.

  • ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    I once saw a billboard that only had text and a picture of some guy.

    The text read “You can’t block this ad”

    It made me so irrationally angry and I still to this day don’t even know what they were advertising for.

    • ElectricMachman@lemmy.sdf.org
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      8 hours ago

      Ooh, I saw something like that once. What they haven’t considered is that you could just cover it up. Hey presto, blocked.

    • JK_Flip_Flop@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      I’d guess it would be the owner of the billboard advertising the space. I’ve definitely seen that before, often accompanied by a “x thousand people see this every day!” type message.

      • ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        Advertising advertising is one of the most hilarious things to me.

        I hate ads on principle but an ad for an ad is just a level of debauchery I can barely fathom

    • ElectricMachman@lemmy.sdf.org
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      8 hours ago

      Ooh, I saw something like that once. What they haven’t considered is that you could just cover it up. Hey presto, blocked.

  • FatVegan@leminal.space
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    13 hours ago

    I once saw a billboard that said somethimg like: if ads for cigarettes are gonna be illegal, it’s not gonna be long and you won’t see an ad of a sausage anymore.

    Like i saw that and was like: good

    Who is driving by that and foaming out of their mouth: NOT MY SAUSAGE!

    • ripcord@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      I remember driving around Germany and seeing ads with really exuberant people eating sausages with slogans like “Fleisch! Na ja!”

      So I’m going to say: the Germans.

        • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works
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          7 hours ago

          I’m not a scholar on this point, but my main inspiration is how unhinged and offended people are about vegetarianism, which implies there’s something deeper at play than a personal preference.

          I think an approximate thumbnail would be that it implicitly challenges a hierarchy where some beings are so superior as to farm and eat other beings, one step away from being able to enslave others, two steps away from being able to subjugate them (the core of any hiearchical system).

          I’ve got no particular dog in the fight, being a meat eater myself.

  • sen@lemmy.zip
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    18 hours ago

    Every time the self checkout prompts me to donate to charity.

    Sir this is a Loblaws, why don’t you donate.

    (They’ve jacked the cost from “round up to the nearest dollar” to like $4.95 for some reason too)

  • AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip
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    18 hours ago

    IMO, the easiest answer is always gonna be literally any pro genAI ads, so I’mma go with something different.

    I don’t remember the brand, but it was this car ad where someone sealed themselves in their car in their garage and was doing the thing where you set it up so the emission fumes backfire into the vehicle and you commit suicide that way. The ad basically boiled down to how their car was so clean you couldn’t kill yourself off the emission fumes and shit.

    I really hope anyone involved with it and/or approved it were either fired and/or had to take some sensitivity course because suicide is something you should never joke about.

  • alternategait@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    There was a partnership between a genealogy group and a cruise line. It makes sense that the people who like one would like the other. The cruise line put out an ad “sail the Atlantic and trace your family” Which is kind of tone deaf for a number of people.

  • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    NVidia recently:

    “… Like how everyone has a home cinema.”

    “The 2070 is too old! Buy a new GPU, I need the money.”

  • plutopos@lemmy.zip
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    23 hours ago

    I was abroad recently. At the radio I got an ad for a company from my country. At the end of the ad, they said their slogan… in their own language. How do you expect people to get your slogan if it’s in a language they don’t speak!?

  • STUNT_GRANNY@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I remember General Electric got a lot of flak for a commercial of theirs, meant to “celebrate America’s hard workers” or whatever.

    They used the song Sixteen Tons.

    • goober@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      Oh yeah. That reminds me a while ago there was some car ad, a car is driving in some beautiful remote mountainous area and the music playing is Major Tom.

      I’m still laughing. Gonna die far away and alone in that tin can.

      • LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        There are multiple actual mercedes-benz commercials featuring the song “Mercedes Benz” by Janis Joplin, which is not-at-all-subtly mocking consumerism and purchasing status symbols