Misaimed Fandom/Advertising

Examples of Misaimed Fandom in Advertising.

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• In Apple's "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads, many people thought that the Mac came across as an arrogant jerk, whereas the PC was a cute, lovable loser. This was particularly notable in the UK, where the localized advertisements featured comedic duo Mitchell and Webb, who played a lovable loser and an arrogant jerk, respectively, in Peep Show.
  • Particularly ironic since the Mac character is pretty close to what a Brit parody might seem like.
  • Also, a good number of people dislike the commercial series because it was all about making the PC look bad. And they chose John Hodgman to play the PC as a whiny, oversized Bill Gates caricature. Problem is, Bill Gates and John Hodgman's PC are personally more charming and affable than Justin Long's Mac.
  • This ad may have reinforced the public perception of Mac users as arrogant jerks.
  • Even Microsoft noticed this, and started making "I'm a PC" ads showing satisfied customers in a Take That to Apple. It worked well enough that MS is doing this even in ads not mentioning its competitor.
  • Consider: if you interviewed these two men for a job, who would you hire? For that matter, who do you think you could stand talking to for more than thirty seconds?
  • Another series of Mac commercials tried to play up how specialized a Mac could be. It contrasted a "typical" Mac user (read: artist) saying he would use a Mac for editing his pictures/music/what have you, with a "typical" PC user saying "boring" things like how he could use his PC for documents, and spreadsheets. The message was clearly intended to be "Buy a Mac and be a hip, unique artist!" The message that actually came across to viewers was, "Buy a PC, it has the stuff you're actually going to use."
• A series of anti-pot radio commercials in the 1990s featured a mock game show with people trying to answer simple questions when high. The moral is supposed to be "Only Dopes Smoke Dope", but comes across more as "Pot will TOTALLY fuck you up (in a good way)!", which pot-smokers were already well aware of.
• Currently in some states, there are anti-drunk driving commercials explaining how if you are drinking and driving, you will be caught and you will be arrested. In order to represent the drunk drivers, they have their cars/motorcycle helmets filled with alcohol, so that opening the window/visor causes the beer to spill out in a waterfall. It quite possibly may be the best anti-anything commercial ever because it is impossible to take seriously. Not that drunk driving is something to be taken lightly - but good luck convincing anyone of that with these commercials. People who already know the dangers of drunk driving, who will probably point out, "Look at all the alcohol they wasted" or "The inside of that car is ruined".
• Be honest -- does anyone consider the Trix Rabbit a bad guy?
  • In 1976, General Mills had a contest where kids were able to vote on the question "Should the Rabbit be able to eat some Trix?" 99% of the responses were "Yes". They had a similar contest in 1990, with the same result.
    • Although in 1990 it turned out to be All Just a Dream. Why does General Mills hate the Trix Rabbit so much?
• The Apple from the current Apple Jacks commercial used to be a Designated Villain, but the makers of the ads changed it due to feedback so that he and "Cinni-Mon" are friendly enemies now.
• Meth, ooh meth! One of the best commercial jingles of all time. Yeah, it's supposed to make meth seem awful, but these commercials just make it sound way, way more useful than coffee.
• The Axe/Lynx commercials where a guy puts some body spray on, and becomes attractive to women. They have a large Hatedom composed of the many people who keep thinking they're supposed to be serious in any way. There's also a series of spots for Axe Hair Care that are the direct opposite, where the girls use the products (in equally ridiculous fashion as the company's regular ads) on guys with bad hair to give them "Girl-Approved Hair", which have been much better received. The moral of the story seems to be that it's wrong for guys to assume they know what women want, but okay for women to actively force their opinion on men.
  • This can be frustrating to the few people who got the joke when they watch "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" Old Spice ads, which are supposed to be a parody of hyper-masculinity in ads, and are widely acclaimed. Part of the reason for the acclaim is that "they don't take themselves seriously, unlike those stupid Axe/Lynx commercials".
  • This ad has a billboard chastising Old Spice - saying Axe is for men who would rather be with a woman than on a horse
  • With regard to the hate that the original Axe ads receive (and whether or not the ads themselves are satire), it doesn't help that a large portion of their target demographic actually expects the product to perform as advertised, and act themselves accordingly. Does it still count as a satire if the misinterpretation of that satire both defines your brand and generates heaps of profit?
    • If one expects it to attract thousands of hot women--and only hot women--from miles around, then one pretty much deserves to be parted from their proverbial money.
  • This falls under the Bernard Manning school of parody: it walks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, it's a parody. Not to mention the fact that they're advertising an actual cruise aimed at 18+ people with naked women. Of course, no sane person would expect the events to occur as portrayed in the advert, but the prurience somehow fails to register as Pythonesque, say.
• The Nazis once made a propaganda spot, "Liese und Miese". (Think about Goofus and Gallant, only with women instead and Nazi propaganda added.) Liese was the good, pro-Nazi German woman; Miese (meaning "the bad one" in German) would be lazy, talk with spies, listen to foreign radio broadcasts, be unpatriotic and so on. However, the (half-Jewish, but the Nazis didn't know this) actress of Miese, Brigitte Mira, made her character more likable. The series was cancelled for being counter-productive.
• In the '80s, there was an anti-drugs campaign in the UK called "Heroin Screws You Up." It was eventually pulled when the actor who played a heroin addict in the TV and poster ads became an unexpected pin-up boy with teen audiences - partly because of the "heroin chic" look that was in fashion at the time.
• Insurance price comparison website Confused.com pulled an ad using a cover of Queen's "Somebody to Love" when it was revealed that an increasing number of people who had seen the commercial thought Confused.com was actually an online dating site.
• An episode of The Gruen Transfer (a show about ads) mentioned how there was a serious problem with drug addicts stealing anti-drug posters to hang up on their wall because they thought they looked awesome and reminded them of drugs.
  • In addition, Todd Sampson (an ad executive on the panel) once told a story about how he and some other ad people were doing surveys and talking to drug addicts as part of their research into anti-drug ad campaigns, and he said that the ice addicts thought the ads against ice were actually really cool and just made them want to take more ice.
• The commercial for the racing game Blur did a Take That reminiscent to a 90's Sega ad, making a shallow jab at Mario Kart and other kart-racing games. However, the cutesy characters on the ad have gotten many fans, and some fan art too.
• Sprite ran a TV campaign that poked fun at a fictional soft drink called "Jooky", intended to represent Sprite's competitors that relied more on flashy advertising gimmicks than taste. Audiences decided that Jooky looked like it would be more fun to drink than Sprite, and so the ads were withdrawn.
• Christmas 2011's Best Buy ads have women buying presents and using them to compete against Santa's gifts. The ads are supposed to show off how Best Buy truly has the gifts your family wants. However almost all of the ads have the women acting like total bitches and mocking Santa in the process. You know, Santa, the most generous man in modern culture that is beloved by all. Guess who people side with?
• Many PSA ads that try to show how eating disorders are bad can backfire among those who have such eating disorders. Showing anorexic women who have been reduced to skeletons with a layer of skin might freak out most people, but to girls so obsessed with losing weight to the point where they have an eating disorder, they see the women in the ads as role models, someone they should strive to be. It's called thinspiration.
• TV commercials for the anti-depressant Abilify feature a cartoon personification of a woman's depression, which is basically a pair of droopy eyes on a shapeshifting gray blob. It's the cutest depression ever!
  • Of course, if the point is to give the impression that your horribly debilitating depression can actually be cute, approachable, and manageable, while they name-drop Abilify over and over again...