I don’t mean like scams or anything like that. I mean what’s the ad that has done the worst job as an advertisement? Instead of making you want to buy the product you wanted to avoid it.

  • hitagi@ani.social
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    9 months ago

    Political campaign ads. Not a product so it might be different. I remember watching one that took advantage of homeless people and it made my stomach hurt.

  • Mr_Blott@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    There was an ad recently on UK TV for some shitty food delivery company,and had a constant loud doorbell sound.

    I emailed the TV channel and said myself and everyone I know have stopped watching their channel because the advert was so obnoxiously irritating.

    They emailed back a month later and said they’d asked the advertiser to redo the advert due to multiple complaints

    We can make a difference if we make an effort!

  • EmergMemeHologram@startrek.website
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    9 months ago

    Wendy’s had a recruitment campaign “a job at Wendy’s serves me right” and I could not think of a job there as anything other than a punishment for something

  • Krudler@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Gillette had an advertisement and it was a bunch of different hot men lined up and a woman fondling their bodies, evaluating what trimming style she found most sexually appealing. They were encouraging you to buy their trimming products.

    I just thought, let’s flip it around. There’s a bunch of busty and tight women in swimsuits, and a man comes and lustfully fondles their bodies, and then they’re telling you to buy makeup.

    Edit. I should add that this was what made me decide to just stop buying their products. It was just one commercial, and I’m not making a big whoopee about it, but it motivated me to make a change and there’s no reason to go back. I pretty much realized through this that I don’t need any of their products that I formerly used, and I can shave myself for pennies versus what I used to pay them for disposable blades.

    • rekabis@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      I just thought, let’s flip it around.

      This is how you best determine the presence of gender bigotry.

      Take the genders in contention, and swap them. If the skit or saying or phrase or whatever no longer “reads” exactly the same as it did before, then the “inoffensive” version is nothing more than gender bigotry being aggressively whitewashed.

      Example: “kill all men” ↔ “kill all women”. Do both sides read the same? Are both sides taken to be “equally offensive” by most of society? No? Congrats, you have correctly identified the left hand side - frequently lobbed about by a majority of female supremacists as “a joke” - as being a whitewashed example of gender bigotry. And mercy upon the soul of anyone who utters the right-hand version, such is the severity of how offensive society sees it as.

      I can shave myself for pennies versus what I used to pay them for disposable blades.

      Safety razor, FTW. Blades are cheap, I can shave myself daily for five years for the same price as a 16-pack of replaceable Gillette razor heads that barely last me six months with only thrice-weekly use. And I have a straightedge for dealing with neck hairs during the winter when I let my beard grow out, works wonders in giving me a clean edge to my beardline. If I take care of it well, I could pass that straightedge down to one of my grandnephews in near-mint condition.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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    9 months ago

    Papa John’s always showed some of the most revolting looking pizza in their ads, and I know ads are usually doctored to make the food look better so if that’s what it looked like in the ad there was no way in hell I was coming into one of those places to get a pizza.

  • leaky_shower_thought@feddit.nl
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    9 months ago

    I think any ad that has the disclaimer guy say about 300 words within 3 minutes at the end has a place in my worst ad bucket. These are mostly drugs. and I don’t remember a single specific so it’s a sure sign.

    also those smiling people eating their salad.

    and that one ad with iPhone that people are jumping about with colors splashing and so little detail on the actual product.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      The law on drug ads is that if they tell you what the drug does, they also have to tell you all the side effects.

      But if they don’t tell you what the drug does, they aren’t required to say the side effects.

      So they used to make two versions of the ad. One that was all about making people feel good about a drug by showing smiling happy people living a good life with lots of wholesome moments then “ask your doctor if zexophlam is right for you.” Then they’d have another ad that tells you what zexophlam does and send a few minutes listing the side effects. But lately I haven’t seen the second type that lists the side effects. It;s just the first type that doesn’t tell you what the drug does.

      Last one I saw kind of made a joke about it where someone is about to tell you what the drug is and they keep getting interrupted. Haha, how clever you are in avoiding telling me that a pill can give people diarrhea or whatever.

  • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    All the anti-smoking ads. I don’t support smoking, but the anti-smoking ads are so dramatic I’m surprised they’re allowed by the Geneva Convention on psychological warfare.

    • xkforce@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      The point of ads is to entice you to buy sonething. Theres a higher chance of me buying something I dont remember the ad for than one that I make a point to avoid because of how terrible the ad for it was.

    • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      You got it! Aside from anything seriously offensive, these are ALL better ads than the ones we’ve completely forgotten about.

  • Rylyshar@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Any ad that runs on youtube. Literally. All of them. You have paid for the privilege of ruining my enjoyment of whatever I was trying to see. Eff you and the product you rode in on.

  • rekabis@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    The Quiznos ad with the talking chinchillas.

    Most people didn’t even know what those things were. I heard them being called weasels and rats and deep-fried hamsters and even beavers.

    But, no. Photos of chinchillas, with talking human mouths superimposed. Ended up being the most fingernails-on-a-chalkboard commercial I have ever come across. Sure, there have been worse commercials in terms of raw stinkers or stupidity, but this one was by far the most repellant one I have ever personally experienced.