Don’t suck … blow
In the good old days when TV spots were cheap and Colgate-Palmolive seemed to have unlimited budget, a style of advertising emerged under the banner of, “It’s so bad it’s good”.
Mrs Marsh broke the piece of chalk 20 times a night for a year and the campaign worked.
Do we have a new version of the same idea emerging in the digital world?
Is iSnack 2.0 so bad it’s good? A better name would not have produced 1/1000th of the buzz online. They’re probably looking for it on supermarket shelves in Nome, Alaska.
Kraft is now looking for a replacement name and dubbing iSnack jars a “Collector’s item”. Although they claim innocence, it may be one of the decade’s greatest sampling successes.
How about the Microsoft advertorials or whatever they are, tutorials perhaps?
I suspect they are so bad they’re good -- but for Microsoft or Apple Mac?? But, again, lots of free buzz online.
In this extraordinary age of hyper word-of-mouth it is certainly a very good idea not to suck. But are we seeing a new, weird, counter position with the slogan, “Don’t suck …. blow.”
Bill Bristow is a Partner at BCM
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5 comments
I agree Bill – the Microsoft clip is so intentionally bad you just can’t ignore it or avoid sharing it. Cheese is definitely the ingredient of the moment.
I’ve got no doubt this was spin from the start. Such a bad name has had to have been deliberate. All agencies will be trying to generate equivalent free buzz similar to what the Best Job in the World, did for TQ.
I doubt that the Vegemite brand will be hurt in the long-run. Great post, Bill.
I wish I could take credit for it, but “Your mum mite” wins hands down for me.
It resonates with teens and mums all over the nation.
I don’t know what’s worse. The token black guy or the windows 7 party.
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