Line #33 MisaimedFandom/Advertising


1	Examples of {{misaimed fandom}} in {{advertising}}.
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5	* Apple:
6	** Many people didn't like "[[Advertising/GetAMac I'm a Mac, I'm a PC]]" ads for the following reasons:
7	*** Many thought that the Mac came across as an arrogant {{hipster}} jerk, whereas the PC was a [[TheWoobie hapless dude who was 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.
8	*** 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.
9	*** The ads reinforced the stereotype that Mac users were snobbish elitists.
10	*** Even Microsoft noticed this, and started making "I'm a PC" ads showing satisfied customers in a TakeThat to Apple.
11	** 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 [[BoringButPractical actually going to use]]." PC commercials used this by showing all the practical uses/features their tablet has that the iPad doesn't.
12	* 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.
13	* The Mercedes-Benz car company has used Music/JanisJoplin's anti-consumerist hippie-era song "Mercedes Benz" in a staggeringly large number of ads. That song is most definitely not in favor of Mercedes-Benzes.
14	* 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's 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]].
15	* The Advertising/TrixRabbit is one of the quintessential examples. 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?" The majority of the responses were "Yes". They had a similar contest in 1990, with the same results. In the latter, however, it turned out to be AllJustADream.
16	** Creator/SethMacFarlane says that he came up with [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl_Ocg1Eoko this parody]] of the ads for ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' out of his sympathy for the rabbit: "I mean, they were ''his'' Trix".
17	%% * 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.
18	* [[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 and mentally deteriorating.
19	* Axe/Lynx:
20	** The commercials where a guy puts some body spray on, and becomes attractive to women in an over-the-top fashion. They have many people who keep thinking they're supposed to be serious in any way, spraying themselves with Axe to attract women.[[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.
21	%% ** 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!
22	* UsefulNotes/NaziGermany once made a propaganda spot, ''Liese und Miese''.[[note]]Think about Goofus and Gallant, only with women instead and Nazi propaganda added.[[/note]] Liese was the good, pro-Nazi German woman; Miese, [[MeaningfulName meaning "the bad one" in German]], would be lazy, talk with spies, listen to foreign radio broadcasts, be unpatriotic and so on. However, Miese's actresses, Brigitte Mira, made her character more likable.[[note]]Mira did this because unbeknownst to the Nazis, she was half-Jewish.[[/note]] The series was cancelled for being counter-productive.
23	* 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.
24	* In the '80s, [[https://youtu.be/O2BQ_J09rVs plenty commercials]] copied the {{Dystopia}}n/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.
25	* 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.
26	* An episode of ''Series/TheGruenTransfer'' (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.
27	* The commercial for the racing game ''VideoGame/{{Blur}}'' did a TakeThat reminiscent to a '90s Creator/{{Sega}} ad, making a shallow jab at ''VideoGame/MarioKart'' and other kart-racing games. However, the cutesy characters on the ad have gotten many fans, and [[http://thweatted.deviantart.com/art/Brock-Lee-and-Co-165840615 some fan art too]].
28	* The soft drink Sprite's Advertising/ObeyYourThirst ad campaign in TheNineties was famous for its DeconstructiveParody 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.
29	* 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?
30	* 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. Or, alternatively, they use the commercials and the fact that they themselves ''aren't'' skeletons with a layer of skin to prove to themselves that they don't have an eating disorder, or at least have it under control.
31	%% * 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.]]
32	%% * 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.
33	* A New Zealand road safety PSA showed a bunch of guys in Halloween costumes going out to a party, but the driver is speeding and crashes into a wall, killing all his friends. It was pulled when campaign response showed that viewers overwhelmingly remembered it as an anti-drink-driving ad because of the costumes and night-time setting - despite the ad making it clear that the message was about speed, and no one being shown to drink.
34	* Jägermeister made a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI4xvRxcva0 fake competitor ad]] in Germany, calling it Kein Jägermeister (Not Jägermeister) and tried to show what squares people are who don't drink Jäger. Thanks to a wave of square chic, people tried to get their hands on the stuff.
35	* 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'' of 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.
36	* ''Advertising/TheScarecrow'' is often interpreted as a pro-veganism and anti-meat short. However, it's a stealth advertisement for Chipotle, which isn't a vegetarian-only restaurant chain. The ad is against the inhumane treatment of animals, not eating animals period.
37	* 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.\
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39	That scene was later taken out after gay groups complained about the implied homophobia, but even without that the ad is reprehensible since it suggests that you're a loser if you pay for things in cash.[[note]]Consider also that it suggests that he's living within his means ... and that, especially two years after Katrina, a lot of the NOLAns shown in the ad probably are living beyond them, like too many Americans, thanks to the easy availability of consumer credit.[[/note]]
40	* A Subaru commercial pulled a CommercialSwitcheroo by first advertising a "Lap 'n' Snack," a snack bowl with a groove that fits over your knee, before destroying the television, switching to an outdoor scene with the car, and telling the audience to get out more. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA3jEuqf3rI&feature=youtu.be Judging by the comments on a YouTube upload of the commercial,]] many people find the Lap 'n' Snack convenient and would prefer it over the car.
41	* [[https://youtu.be/G9hJK4fCq4U The House Hippo]] from ''Advertising/CompaniesCommittedToKids'' 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.
42	* 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 either praise or bash Burger King for supporting "traditional values." This led to backlash even from people who knew what Burger King was ''trying'' to do, but thought the BaitAndSwitchComment was poorly executed.

Context MisaimedFandom / Advertising