Possibly the worst Internet ad I have ever seen (and clicked on)

Caught this ad on Fark.com. I know their rates are pretty cheap, but I can honestly say I have never before seen an ad try less hard than this to get me to click.

I've seen centred default font before. I've even seen red asterisks used for emphasis. And "engrish" copy. But I think it's the hand-drawn arrows and circle around the URL that make this ad epic bad.

So of course I clicked it. Let me spare you the effort. It took me to this page:



And for some reason, I clicked again. Here's what I got:

Hi I am Mukesh, your stress help. What I have is unique tips for how you can be always stress free. It is very important that you are stress free. You are happy and have control of your life.

My friends call me stress free mentor. In last five years I help many people to be stress free. I am a cancer survivor. I fought cancer since 1995. I had three surgeries and my speech is impaired by this. I had tones of stress. I search and spent lot of time and money for stress relief. By experience I found some simple things which are good for managing stress.

You have shown interest and I will send you my paper ‘How do you invite stress’. You simply email me with your name and email and I will send you link to download paper. Read ‘How do you invite stress’ and you will feel better.

And no campaign would be complete without 100% authentic testimonials, such as:

"this is the guide am expecting for a long time i mean to get rid of my stress. thanks. good work. fabulous thinking."

"Good guide for relieving stress to enlighten life which is very stressful. Thanks for writing such a marvelous guide.

"Dear Mr Shah: I applaud your effort in attempting to create a tool for assisting people in relieving one of the most prevalent health problems that plagues society. Unfortunately, the book does not come across as a professional product. Having good conversational command of the English language is one thing, the ability to communicate well in writing is quite another. My advice to you is have someone who is a native English speaker rewrite the book for you."

Yes, that last one is really there.

So here's to you, Mr. Mukesh Shah. You are either the worst marketer of all time, or the best. After all, you certainly sucked me in.