The New Thing in Advertising-Atrocious Ads Get People’s Attention

In the last month and a half, I have felt the need to mock the two shockingly bad advertisements below. Snuggie

Microsoft SongSmith

Both are pretty horrid. But oddly the fact of the matter is that they both have been wildy succesful. As the economy withered in October, cable stations were forced to show more cheap remnant commercials (usually short infomercials). Snuggie ads proliferated late night television and were sarcastically embraced by the web. The Snuggie ads were almost an inside joke within social media/digital generation. While some of their 4 million orders to date were likely very legitimate, its my opinion that the majority of them are cooky status sybmol novelty gift buys. Its so lame its actually cool.

The item is so popular that there is almost a 2 month wait to get one and retailers Bed Bath and Beyond as well as Walgreens are now carrying the ridiculous item. Competitive team’s in various leagues have been named Snuggie On Back Order in addition to popular Facebook fan groups and websites. To that effect, Microsoft is having similar success marketing their Songsmith music making program. While its not clear how much success they are having on the sales side, numerous people have downloaded the free demo and created new versions of classic songs with the program. Below are recent Google News and Google Blog search results for the program which has only been out for a couple of weeks. News Articles (You can’t buy this type of PR. You earn it with the worst commercial ever)

Blogs (Lots of traction making bloggers ears bleed)

So is this a new trend in marketing? Make something so painfully awful that consumers feel the need to mock your product furthering your advertising reach. Honestly, I can see this unconventional method being repeatable for lots of products. Viral marketing has been a proven way to create interest and buzz in a new product. Executing a campaign like this and getting corporate buy in for going the “so bad, its good” strategy will be a challenge, but here are two great examples of it being incredibly successful.