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Great marketing for bad brands
By Charles Martin | October 6, 2009
I am recently jazzed and amused about bad brands that have good marketing. I hope that some of the big guys can pick up some ideas and get their products moving through the channel. Here are a few amusements I find today.
Platinum:
Natural Light Beer : Natty ads. “Natta Boy” — “what someone says to the guy who brings Natural Light to the game”. — An AWFUL watered down beer gets a great boost by saying, “hey, we’re pretty low end and we speak to our low end demo”. The tag lines make you laugh in traffic and why not? You know the people that drink this beer (read: college kids and your uncle louie) and you know they’d say stupid stuff like this.
Gold:
That stupid foam finger and beer holder combo advertised on NFL football games this season. (Tailgate Superstars?) — The Natty drinkers best friend. You go to the website and you see these friggin’ foam fingers — a holdout from 1988 football games — and now they hold your warm Coors. Great! I was thinking last night about how the auditions for that spokesman must’ve been really on the low end. The guys that use the foam finger in the fake audience were definitely the guys who blew the audition but got a honorable mention part. You can’t help but like this ad. They hired the clean cut skinny guy because in a tailgate at USC he’s the dumb ass you were always entertained by in college but never thought was going to make it.
Silver:
The new Big Carl. The song IS better than that crappy McDonald’s Big Mac song. I think these ads really show us what burger eating is all about. Sloppy, malicious, and the ugly side of carnivorous. I hate fast food by the way. At least in your car I do.
Bronze:
Barbra Streisand’s new album “Love is the Answer”. I was flying through a grocery store or carwash the other day and low and behold there’s Babs with her silver (blanket?) wrapped up and around her neck almost covering her lovely New Jersey Turnpike face. I only think Jersey girl when I see her. I secretly want to deliver pizza to her and Brolin in BelAir one day only so I can see what kind of boxers or skivvies he wears while she stands behind with her change purse getting me my last penny (Babs doesn’t tip I know it). But, I digress. She has a PLASTIC CD that she’s selling in places only the CD set with a 1997 Cad will buy. Yuck. I truly think her voice is amazing. I think her Village Vanguard appearance is brill. But gosh girl, I can tell your agent is in a wheelchair from old age and your label rep has a statue at Sony. Just like Bob Lefetz says to U2, go crazy, go wild. Show up at the OC County Fair (you can get good body guards you know) and you will sell to new devotees. Show up at Ross Dress For Less in the shoe aisle in Sherman Oaks and you’ll SURELY sell CD’s. Show up at Mercedes Benz of Beverly Hills and guess what? You’ll SELL CDs. I know you Babs and I know you didn’t do that album to NOT sell it. Show us you have the chops before iTunes or Amazon MP3s puts you on the $3 album shelf.
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