Terrible Trend Alert: Intentionally Bad Ads.
There is an Art to making "Un-Ads". This year, brands are doing it very badly.
The problem with making fun of advertising with your advertising is that people hate advertising and they won’t believe for a second that you also hate advertising because you are an advertiser trying to advertise something to them that they don’t want.
Oatly are learning that lesson, currently, with a campaign promoting a newsletter they are calling “spam”.
OATLY
After reading they above headlines, do you think, “Oh how irreverent, how clever”. Or, do you think, “FUCK you, douchebags”. It’s a rhetorical question.
Below, top: this ad is senseless as is our new “product”, so sign up. Below, bottom: 5538 pop-ups. Just looking at that mess, forget walking through it, makes me feel ill.
Oatly was also reamed to Hell and back on reddit.
This is a shame, because Oatly’s original Swedish ads featuring CEO Toni Petersson interacting with a “cow” were funny—like when he takes a smelly Sunday drive, and another where the “cow” tries to stop Toni from obnoxiously promoting Oatly to school children. This is one of the few examples of a good CEO-led campaign.
Surreal Cereal
Ha-ha, look how self-derisive we’re being with our new billboards.
This new campaign for Surreal cereal is just embarrassing. The “ordinary people with famous names” concept has been done and overdone in the past. It wasn’t interesting the first time, and it’s really uninteresting this time.
OK. Now let’s look at three examples of the proper way to do purposely bad Un-Ads, including hilarious spots featuring Ricky Gervais. To see the good ads, buy a subscription here.