Ask Lemmy

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!?

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/911-mattress-ad-controversy

or the peddling AI detection software, by using AI.

Another one near me, not technically an ad but a name: The Dead River Company. They deliver oil.

That grubhub cgi one with the fat assed people dancing.

https://youtu.be/X6tT_PMnEbU

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.

That shitty PSA Ajit Pai made when he helped kill Net Neutrality during his time on the FCC.

I live in a neighborhood where every day I see more and more people who can't make ends meet. Shops and services are closing every month and the storefronts stand empty.

The bank near me has signs up in their window "Celebrating 250 Years of the American Dream!"

Read the fucking room.

Blizzard's "Do you guys not have phones?" blunder during the Diablo Immortal reveal

Amazon spent millions on a single Ring ad during the Super Bowl that was so poorly received it killed a multi-million dollar business deal.

To be clear, all the companies involved are the worst of the worst, so fuck them, but all they had to do was nothing and it would have turned out better (for them, worse for the rest of us).

And

The latest I can think of is Gwyneth Paltrow's ad for a luxury condo project on stolen Palestinian land by Israel.

We've just had a campaign on our city's public transport trams that said "I'm identifying as a trolleybus".

During pride month, nonetheless.

Amazon Climate Pledge Arena

after they fired the two women who organized the internal protest campaign to pressure Amazon leadership to make a pledge to improve their climate impact

Do not share advertising. Mocking is sharing, not stopping. The only attention we need tp pay to advertising is blocking its presentation and banning its production.

That Pepsi ad during BLM.

"It's all about good jeans." - Sydney Sweeny

There was an ad from Coke entirely generated by AI last Christmas. It wasn’t even cute or on point, there was editing error, etc. People complained so much that they pulled out the ad

I still think that the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) remarketing themselves after decades of abuse scandals, and they settle on the name "Scouting America" or... SA...

I get that they wanted to make scouting an all gender thing. That's good.... but they probably shoulda workshopped that name a bit more given the history and context of the organization.

I have one I still remember 20 years later. Although the stupid decision wasn't made by the company buying an ad, but where the newspaper placed it.

A newspaper placed an ad by eon how they "securing tomorrow's gas today" under an article about an exhibition of the fate of Sinti people in Nazi Germany (the fate was Auschwitz).

What inspired the post: a cigarette lighter that was handed out as part of an election campaign with the slogan “FOR OUR CHILDREN” on it. The lighter is too bulky for children’s hands /s