37 Years Ago: The Best Ever Un-Advertising Campaign.

Anti-Advertising? Bad-vertising? Un-vertising? Y'all are doing it wrong.

The terrible trend of intentionally bad ads has become an epidemic, which is very predictable. “Habit” continues to take over for Creativity in Advertising. Why try a different idea when you can take an existing one and “tweak” it.

Here’re are two more recent un-vertising examples.

Cadbury (UK)

No attempt to try to be creative here by London’s VCCP. The ads are just…bad? “DON’T” search…? OK, I won’t. Another line: “Doesn’t mint chocolate just remind you of Nan’s cupboard?” No, it doesn’t. Via Design Taxi:

Creatives at VCCP explained that the campaign played on the strong opinions customers have on mint chocolate while telling those who love the taste to act quickly despite efforts to “stop it from becoming too popular.”

Sure. “Stop it”. It you wanna do reverse psychology ads why not just write: CADBURY TWIRL MINT TASTES EXACTLY LIKE HUMAN EXCREMENT. Push that fucking non-idea.

Pineapple Insurance (South Africa)

This campaign “broke the internet” last Fall according to some South African financial website that is very desperate for Pineapple to advertise with them.

Above, Pineapple takes you inside the fascinating-to-zero-insurance-customers billboard-making process.

LEFT: 3. created by idiots. RIGHT: And Maybe we’ll rip you off of every fucking penny we can because that’s what insurance companies do, across the board.

LEFT: The ‘ol (as in old and tired) “No one” meme. RIGHT: Fantastic. WTF is 100% pure insurance. NOTE: Thanks to Matt for the tip here.

OK, current brands, back to the late 80s and your valuable lesson for the day in Anti-Advertising.