History MisaimedFandom / Advertising

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLG2JP0P5JE The North American house hippo]] is the subject of a beloved Canadian PublicServiceAnnouncement, done in the style of a nature documentary explaining its habits, followed by a voice pointing out that although it seems "really... real", the house hippo obviously doesn't exist, and the same can be said about a lot of what's shown on TV. It was meant to teach kids critical thinking (and thus ''avoid'' being part of a MisaimedFandom) and to not blindly trust everything they see on television, but some younger viewers who were captivated by the fun "documentary" part stopped paying attention once it got to the boring part explaining the message, and completely missed the point of the PSA as a result. Many Canadian kids grew up actually believing house hippos were real because of this, with some of them even staying up late to look for them or leaving offerings of peanut butter toast and bits of string.

*** Many thought that the Mac came across as an arrogant {{hipster}} jerk, whereas the PC was a [[TheWoobie hapless dude who were overwhelmed with common problems because he's new to computers]]. 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 ''Series/{{Peep Show}}''. This is especially ironic since the Mac character is pretty close to what a Brit parody might seem like.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaB1So7rDzw 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. Of course the upbeat jingle contrasts jarringly with the unsettling images of an attractive young woman physically deteriorating.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaB1So7rDzw 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.

* In the '80s, [[https://youtu.be/O2BQ_J09rVs plenty commercials]] copied the dystopian/SurrealHorror ObstructiveBureaucrat visuals from Creator/TerryGilliam's ''Film/{{Brazil}}'' to promote new computers and employment agencies, even though the movie had strong themes against capitalism, commercialization and if anything it ''satirized'' the very things those commercials sold.

* Mattel used Scandinavian pop band Aqua's popular song "Barbie Girl", a satire of the culture surrounding Barbies (read: showing girls as spoiled, shallow slaves to fashion and money), to sell Barbie dolls. Bizarrely, Mattel had earlier tried to sue Aqua's record label for tarnishing the Barbie brand.
* Music/BruceSpringsteen's "Born in the USA," a song full of highly ambiguous and quite critical message about the unfulfilled promise of the American Dream and certainly not of uncritical super-patriotic themes, was adopted by political ads for many American right-wing politicians, including, most notably, UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan's 1984 reelection campaign. Springsteen was notably annoyed by this development.
** Donald Trump did the same thing during the 2016 campaign, resulting in a cease and desist order from Bruce.

* The Apple from the Apple Jacks commercial used to be a DesignatedVillain, but the makers of the ads changed it due to feedback so that he and "Cinni-Mon" are [[FriendlyEnemy friendly enemies]] now.

* Axe:
** The commercials where a guy puts some body spray on, and becomes attractive to women. They have many people who ''keep thinking they're supposed to be serious in any way''.[[note]]Of course, there's as just a large a group who thinks that, satirical or not, any ad campaign based on depicting women becoming uncontrollably sex-crazed upon smelling a cologne, is based on sexual objectification, whether it's meant to be humorous or not.[[/note]] Presumably, if most Axe brands didn't smell like rubbing alcohol and aerosol, or made their elements of satire clearer like in "Advertising/TheManYourManCouldSmellLike" Old Spice ads, there'd be fewer problems.
** They might not be people who take the ads seriously but rather Axe wearers who ''do'' seem to take the ads too much to heart and consequently drench themselves in the reeking stuff.
** [[http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2010/10/axe-calls-out-old-spice-for-its-horse-fixation.html This ad has a billboard chastising Old Spice, saying Axe is for men who would rather be with a woman than on a horse.]]
** The designers of the Axe commercials seem to have been watching the old [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtwh3nQP5Uo Hai Karate]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECvWJadIKNY after-shave]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyar3czz74M commercials from the 1960s]]. Be careful how you use it!

* 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. Later on, the Abilify depression blob was replaced with an equally as [[http://image.cdn.ispot.tv/ad/7fla/abilify-terri-and-team-large-4.jpg cute depression pill.]]
* Zoloft ads featured a cute, depressed blob. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHG8cjI5B-w This one was even parodied]] in a ''Series/{{MADtv}}'' sketch.
* ''Film/TheHungerGames'':
** When the film ''Film/TheHungerGamesCatchingFire'' came out, a number of companies tried to capitalize on the popularity of the franchise, including Subway ("Where victors eat!") and Covergirl with their [[http://www.seventeen.com/fashion/blog/covergirl-hunger-games-makeup-line Hunger Games makeup line]] ("Soon, you can look a little bit more like Katniss or your fave Capitol citizen!"). Remember that in the books and films, Katniss was made famous because she killed other teenagers in a sadistic gladiatorial game for the entertainment of a corrupt upper class. Ironically, the in-universe Capitol might have put out ads just like these, given the amount of popularity the victors had.
*** ''The Hunger Games'' makeup line from Covergirl was especially misaimed, given that Katniss never wore makeup on her own and hated wearing it in the Capitol since it was another opulent luxury (in her homeland of District 12, the people could barely afford food). Plus, ''Catching Fire'' was about Katniss helping to start a rebellion against the society wearing this sort of makeup.
*** Subway's "Where Victors eat!" tagline sounds cool out of context, but consider who the Victors are. The first we're introduced to is Haymitch, a man whose experiences in the arena and afterwards[[note]]by the time of the 74th Hunger Games, he's helped train ''forty-six'' other tributes from District 12, none of whom survived[[/note]] have led to alcoholism. The Victors we meet in ''Catching Fire'', including Katniss herself, are all not only similarly traumatized but also resentful of their continued use as propaganda tools. They are people deserving of sympathy, not ones whose lives we're meant to aspire to.
** There was at least one line of chocolate bars, which had twelve different flavors, one for each District. As in, the same Districts that are suffering from severe poverty and for the most part can barely feed themselves.

* The advertising onslaught for ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' included Burger King cups with the characters on them, and the slogan "Collect them all to unleash the power of the One Ring!" It's unknown whether Tolkien fans were headdesking harder at this or at the beautifully designed bookmarks that turned up everywhere with ''heavy, well-made, authentic-looking copies of the One Ring'' attached to them. What was forgotten in the ad is that The Lord of the Rings was the bad guy.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLG2JP0P5JE The North American house hippo]] is the subject of a beloved Canadian PublicServiceAnnouncement, done in the style of a nature documentary explaining its habits, followed by a voice pointing out that although it seems "really... real", the house hippo obviously doesn't exist, and the same can be said about a lot of what's shown on TV. It was meant to teach kids critical thinking and to not blindly trust everything they see on television, but some younger viewers who were captivated by the fun "documentary" part stopped paying attention once it got to the boring part explaining the message, and completely missed the point of the PSA as a result. Many Canadian kids grew up actually believing house hippos were real because of this, with some of them even staying up late to look for them or leaving offerings of peanut butter toast and bits of string.

* UsefulNotes/{{NASA}} have an annual publication, ''Spinoff'', intended to show the general public "that 0.4% of your (American) tax dollar isn't wasted and is instead used to improve your life." The problem with this campaign is that almost no one outside of the space community knows about it (as evident by the writing style they aren't the target audience). On the off chance that the general public do reads a little bit, expect universal negative reactions regarding "NASA's waste of money". In addition, even during the Apollo Era, where tens of thousands of dollars were tossed into advertising, the public notion to abolish NASA has always been the majority -- over half.

*** Many thought that the Mac came across as an arrogant {{hipster}} jerk, whereas the PC was a [[TheWoobie 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 ''Series/{{Peep Show}}''. This is especially ironic since the Mac character is pretty close to what a Brit parody might seem like.

* The soft drink Sprite's "Obey Your Thirst" ad campaign in TheNineties was famous for its sendup of advertising tropes, and helped Sprite carve out a niche in that decade. However, some ads from it worked better than others. One of the less successful examples was a TV campaign that poked fun at a fictional soft drink called [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsys9hYFewc "Jooky"]], intended to represent Sprite's competitors that relied more on flashy advertising gimmicks than taste. Even with TheReveal at the end that the people actually drinking Jooky were [[ThisLoserIsYou layabout slackers]], audiences decided that Jooky looked like it would be more fun to drink than Sprite, and so the ads were withdrawn.

* In the '80s, [[https://youtu.be/O2BQ_J09rVs plenty commercials]] copied the dystopian/SurrealHorror ObstructiveBureaucrat visuals from Creator/TerryGilliam's ''Film/{{Brazil}}'' to promote new computers and employment agencies, even though the movie had strong themes against capitalism and commercialization.

* In the '80s, [[https://youtu.be/O2BQ_J09rVs plenty commercials]] copied the dystopian/SurrealHorror ObstructiveBureaucrat visuals from Creator/TerryGrilliam's ''Film/{{Brazil}}'' to promote new computers and employment agencies, even though the movie had strong themes against capitalism and commercialization.

* This happened to Music/NeilYoung with his song "Rockin' in the Free World", which is about homeless people, drug addiction, babies stuffed into trash cans, and UsefulNotes/GeorgeHWBush ineffective rhetoric. Only the last verse, which references Rev. Jesse Jackson's "Keep Hope Alive" Presidential campaign, is hopeful. When UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump tried to use it for his campaign, Young [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UCrZbmATFo reacted with angry invective]].

* A commercial for the UsefulNotes/PlayStation4 features Music/LouReed's "Perfect Day" being boisterously sung by two friends playing against each other while portraying various video game characters. "Perfect Day" is about heroin addiction. ("Perfect Day" is NOT about Heroin Addiction, [[WordOfGod Word of God]] said so before he died, and he actually laughed at the theory.) As such, it could be unwittingly sending a message about [[AccidentalAesop how many people play video games for the same reason some drug addicts use heroin]], out of [[ThisLoserIsYou loneliness and desperation and seeking escapism...]]

* A commercial for the UsefulNotes/PlayStation4 features Music/LouReed's "Perfect Day" being boisterously sung by two friends playing against each other while portraying various video game characters. "Perfect Day" is about heroin addiction. ("Perfect Day" is NOT about Heroin Addiction, [[WordOfGod]] said so before he died, and he actually laughed at the theory.) As such, it could be unwittingly sending a message about [[AccidentalAesop how many people play video games for the same reason some drug addicts use heroin]], out of [[ThisLoserIsYou loneliness and desperation and seeking escapism...]]

* A commercial for the UsefulNotes/PlayStation4 features Music/LouReed's "Perfect Day" being boisterously sung by two friends playing against each other while portraying various video game characters. "Perfect Day" is about heroin addiction. As such, it could be unwittingly sending a message about [[AccidentalAesop how many people play video games for the same reason some drug addicts use heroin]], out of [[ThisLoserIsYou loneliness and desperation and seeking escapism...]]

* One anti-domestic violence campaign featured an ad with a male and female child. The boy says, "One day, I'll grow up to beat my wife", while the girl says, "One day, my husband will beat me to death." The ad was almost immediately latched onto by advocates of male domestic violence victims as a clear example of how the very ''existence'' male victims -- who make up between 48% and 52% of all domestic violence victims according to the Centers for Disease Control -- was regularly swept under the rug, much less the fact that they make up ''half'' of all domestic violence victims, ''and'' that there are many female domestic violence perpetrators. The ad was yanked from billboards across the U.S. within two weeks of the beginning of the campaign it was meant for.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0Uin2sINdQ This PSA.]] The message presented in the video is, "You wouldn't get away with it here. You shouldn't get away with it at home." However, a distressing number of commenters seem to sympathize with the man and admonish the waitress for apparently disrespecting him and his coffee (mind, this ''is'' [[{{Troll}} a YouTube]] [[InternetJerk comment]] [[WretchedHive section]] we're talking about).

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0Uin2sINdQ This PSA.]] The message presented in the video is, "You wouldn't get away with it here. You shouldn't get away with it at home." However, a distressing number of commenters seem to sympathize with the man and admonish the waitress for apparently disrespecting him and his coffee (mind, this ''is'' [[{{Troll}} a YouTube]] [[{{GIFT}} comment]] [[WretchedHive section]] we're talking about).

* In March 2021, Burger King tweeted, "Women belong in the kitchen." before adding another tweet saying, "If they want to, of course." and advertising their new scholarship fund to support underrepresented female chefs. Unfortunately, many people just read the ''first'' tweet and assumed Burger King was unironically telling women to StayInTheKitchen, and many accounts retweeted the first tweet without context to praise Burger King for supporting "traditional values." This led to backlash even from people who knew what Burger King was ''trying'' to do, but though the BaitAndSwitchComment was poorly executed.

* In March 2021, Burger King tweeted, "Women belong in the kitchen." before adding another tweet saying, "If they want to, of course." and advertising their new scholarship fund to support underrepresented female chefs. Unfortunately, many people just read the ''first'' tweet and assumed Burger King was unironically telling women to StayInTheKitchen, and many accounts retweetedthe first tweet without context to praise Burger King for supporting "traditional values." This created a backlash even from people who knew what Burger King was trying to do, but though the BaitAndSwitchComment was poorly executed.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLG2JP0P5JE The North American house hippo]] is the subject of a beloved Canadian PublicServiceAnnouncement, done in the style of a nature documentary explaining its habits, followed by a voice pointing out that although it seems "really... real", the house hippo obviously doesn't exist, and the same can be said about a lot of what's shown on TV. It was meant to teach kids critical thinking and to not blindly trust everything they see on television, but somehow, many younger viewers missed the point of the PSA and actually believed house hippos were real, with some of them even staying up late to look for them or leaving offerings of peanut butter toast and bits of string.

* The Greek toy company "Jumbo" published some ads in the "Republic of Joy" series that "go against stereotypes with humor, gentleness and sudden truths". One such ad depicted a straight couple, and a gay one (with two men). However the point of the ad was missed, and the ad itself caused fireworks that could be seen from the moon. Many people took offense of the company depicting lesbians as normal people and even wanting Jumbo to apologize. It got to the point is that the company's head said the Greeks were spoiled because of the ad's reception.

* An ad for AT&T has a man who works for a cable company come to career day at his kid's school. Before he even gets to explain his job, a little girl quips that cable can't bundle TV and phone service, but that AT&T does. The purpose of the ad is to make AT&T look good, but it only makes you feel sorry for the poor cable company worker as he gets humiliated by everybody because [[KidsAreCruel one pint-sized tyrant interrupted him to basically call him worthless.]] What make it even worse is that the man working for the cable company almost certainly doesn't have any power to change anything, so why target him?
--> '''Cable Worker:''' ''(pissed off) Who wants to talk to a fireman?''

* In some states, there are/were anti-drunk driving [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHytr5GocwY 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 (or wine or martini, depending on where they are in the socioeconomic ladder. The redneck had beer in his car, while the middle class guy had martini in his car, and the upper class guy had red wine) to spill out in a waterfall. It quite possibly may be the best anti-anything commercial ever because it is [[HilarityEnsues impossible to take]] [[{{Narm}} 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''".

* Back in 2007, Visa ran [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKPMIDrqkVM an ad][[note]]Not the original music to avoid a copyright claim[[/note]] featuring a lot of New Orleans Saints fans getting ready for a game by buying gear and food (distinctive New Orleans crayfish), getting the team's logo shaved into their hair and other things, all of course paid for with their Visa cards. Near the end one guy at a sporting goods store, wearing a pink shirt with a sweater tied around his neck, pays cash for some tennis balls. Everyone scowls and the jaunty recording of Louis Armstrong playing "When the Saints Go Marching In" stops temporarily.\\