Subaru ad serves up old-timey sexism

If they had web ads in the 1950s, I'll bet they'd look like this:

This ad, which compounds its failure by having a bad link, was spotted on Fark.com. 

There's also a banner:

I guess the archaic humour is supposed to be ironic. It might have worked for a beer brand, with the explanation "we're making fun of that sort of thing", but for a major automotive brand it's a lemon.

What the hell have we been eating all these years?

McCain Deep'n Delicious frozen chocolate cake is a Canadian comfort food classic. But I have to admit I was a little alarmed at the ad above.

It clicks through to this product page, which states

The dessert you grew up with is now made with better ingredients. 

We’ve put a lot of heart into our new recipes to ensure we deliver the icing you love on an even better cake. It’s all part of our journey to make our yummy desserts using the same ingredients you’d find in your own kitchen, like flour, eggs, baking powder and vanilla.

 Once again: What the hell was in it before?!?

But Julia, my wife, had no issue whatsoever with this approach. "I'm glad to hear it!" she quipped.

When asked whether she was alarmed by having it pointed out that the countless freezer cakes we had eaten in years past were basically frozen chemicals, her response was "It was the '70s. We didn't care!"

The target market has spoken.

Awkward contextual ad on VIA terror plot news

Today, the RCMP announced the arrest of two men in connection with an "al-Qaeda-supported" plan to attack a VIA Rail passenger train in Canada. And this ad appeared above it.

This kind of thing actually happens all the time, from awkward grizzlies to PETA hamburgers. It's pretty much unavoidable in a major internet campaign.

A friend shared this unfortunate screenshot of a VIA ad above the CBC story. I can't seem to reproduce the combination through multiple refreshes, so I'll assume that VIA's media people caught it early. But not before someone else caught it for posterity.

Even Weight Watchers is boobvertising now #FdAdFriday

Just the other day I was minding my own business on the internet, as usual, when this banner ad caught my attention:

I thought it must be innocent. Just a woman who happens to have a Hendricksian bosom and who lost weight with WW's online programme. But since I was wondering anyway, I clicked.

Am I reading too much into this, or is their an awful lot of attention on this woman's breasts?

Strangely, I forgot to bookmark the site for later reference. Now, when I google Weight Watchers Online Canada, I get this instead:

Did they change their tactics? Was it a phishing scam? I guess we'll never know.

Coke does something kind of cool

I wish it were something warm, though.

It's a banner ad that gives the temperature (in celsius) on The Weather Network. (Although it's not as if the temperature is right there beside it.)

It's been a chilly spring so far in Ottawa.

Does click-through matter?

As far back as the turn of the century, there were people saying it doesn't. But over and over again, I see clients evaluating online campaigns for click-through rates. But in many cases, the ads themselves are not designed to generate clicks.

Here's the problem — there are two basic kinds of banner ads out there:

1) Awareness/branding

These ads are really just billboards on the (I cringe as I type this) "information superhighway". They act just like outdoor ads, because they only want to make you aware of a new movie, basic message, or consumer brand.



This is pure branding. They don't really need you to do anything besides look, and realize that this is part of an integrated campaign.

2) Direct marketing

These ads are the junk mail of the Internet. They show up uninvited on your homepage, and they want to entice you to act. "Punch the monkey and win a prize!" "Find your best insurance rate!" "Meet hot singles in your area!" Or maybe just finish up your education.



If these ads seem more lurid and crass, it's because they are. Direct marketing is designed to get you to act, and the creative will use any trick in the book to get you to open that envelope — or in this case, to click the ad. They're like a desperate salesman with his foot in the door. Billboards, on the other hand, can take a higher road — whatever the medium.

Both kinds of banner ads are valid marketing strategies, but they can become marketing tragedies if you don't know which kind of banner your ad is supposed to be.

This is something that's particularly difficult in government social marketing, when the message is simple enough to be effectively communicated in a flash, but the campaign is evaluated on how many users click though "for more information".

Billboard or junk mail? It's your call. But you have to make the right one early on, before your objectives come back to haunt you.