Unintentionally Sympathetic / Advertising

• The Trix Rabbit. Seriously, is there a person alive who doesn't want to see him get his bowl of cereal? Case in Point: In both 1976 and 1990, Trix held a vote where kids could cut a ballot out of the box, write whether or not they wanted the rabbit to get some Trix, and send it in. The results? Overwhelmingly "yes" in both cases, with over 80% saying yes in 1990..
  • At one point, the Trix Rabbit actually just buys some for himself - and the kids immediately steal it, simply saying that it's for kids. It's hard not to side with him afterwards.
  • And of course, the infamous "Got Milk?" commercial, where he successfully disguises himself and is just about to finally eat some... only to have no milk.
  • And a commercial where he won an ice skating contest and tried to celebrate with Trix, only for the kids to pop up from out of nowhere and take away not just his Trix, but his trophy that he earned fair and square.
• The "ditch the old broom" commercials by Swiffer, which were filmed in such a way to make the "dumped" broom/mop/wiping implement seem morbidly depressed and their human "ex" seem callous. Almost all the new commercials in the campaign feature the dismissed cleaning tool meeting a new household implement partner.
• I Can't Believe It's Not Butter's The Butter Compartment ads see a stick of real butter portrayed as The Friend Nobody Likes that has to compete with different varieties of the titular spread, all of which are more popular with the other foods in the fridge than she is. While it's meant to depict how much healthier I Can't Believe It's Not Butter is to real butter, everyone else in the fridge is a callous and condescending Jerkass, so the stick of butter comes off as a browbeaten and depressed victim of bullying.
• Lucky from the Lucky Charms commercials, given how constantly he keeps being harassed by the kids.
• The Mac vs PC ads invoked this since the PC guy comes off as a lovable loser woobie, while Mac comes off as very smug, which ironically ties directly into certain stereotypes of Mac users. Mac is basically a particularly arrogant hipster, while the PC is a put-upon everyman — at worst he's a bit of a Small Name, Big Ego in response to Mac talking about his own popularity. This ultimately meant that the ads backfired on Apple to the level that Microsoft started releasing "I'm a PC" ads. Only the hardcore Mac devotees would be aware that "PC" John Hodgman is actually a Mac user.
• There's a commercial for Frosted Mini-Wheats depicting a boxing match between a Mini-Wheat and a Honey Nut Cheerio. The Cheerio is half the size of the Mini-Wheat, showing it lacks fiber. As the match begins, the Cheerio faints before a punch is thrown. The problems? One: not just the boxer, but the announcers, the referee, the press, and every single member of the audience is also a Mini-Wheat, so the odds of the Cheerio getting a fair treatment come across as nil; if it somehow won, the riotous crowd would probably kill it. Two: this is a boxing match, but the Cheerio has no arms or hands. Three: upon proclaiming his "victory," the Mini-Wheat tries to act modest but just comes across as smugly falsely modest. It's not hard to feel that the Cheerio either fainted from terror at being stuck in a match it can't win surrounded by a huge horde of enemies, or that it threw the fight to get out of there alive. Then again, it doesn't even have eyes or a mouth. It could have just fallen over because it was a regular, non-anthropomorphic Cheerio. Who the hell booked that match, anyway?
• A line of commercials for Comcast's "Xfinity" cable TV/home Internet/digital phone service features a tired, tangled, grumpy bundle of phone lines (representing ATT's competing "U-verse" service) who repeatedly advises a family complaining about his slow speeds to get a new, better service (i.e., Xfinity). Though we're meant to feel sorry for the family, they come off as incredibly Ungrateful Bastards who refuse to even acknowledge all the years and years of service he's given, whining because he can't instantly download movies and other petty complaints. In one ad, he wistfully talks about the good old days, and tries to tell the eye-rolling teenage son to enjoy his youth... only to turn around and find the impatient Jerkass walked out.
• There's a cars.com ad with a grey car crying because it got a bad review while a red car with a good review was being a complete Jerkass. It makes you just want to go out and buy that poor grey car.
• An ad for yogurt shows two women on an airplane. One is on a laptop doing work, the other is eating yogurt, saying that it's almost bikini season. The woman on the laptop tells her that with all the work they're doing, they're not likely to ever even go to the beach (nevermind that they're both Hollywood Pudgy anyway). In the next scene, the plane has crashed, and as both women are sitting there looking shocked, a handsome, muscular man invites one of them to help get fresh water; the yogurt-eating woman jumps up, takes off her shirt, and smugly volunteers, leaving her friend to cope with surviving a plane crash on a desert island by herself while she goes off with some guy and "gets wet". It's hard not to feel bad for the woman who is apparently supposed to feel inadequate and embarrassed for not slacking off and sucking down yogurt.
• An old ad for car insurance featured a number of people standing in front of a judge, trying to explain why they decided to do something incredibly stupid while driving. For the most part, they all acted foolishly, until we get to a middle-aged man who simply explained that there had been a hot cigarette lighter on his pants. The judge's expression and the ad's narration make it clear that we're supposed to see him as just an idiot, but considering that we never hear how serious or minor whatever he did was and how easily having a hot object like that could cause him to lose his concentration, it's not hard to take the side of the man or at least think he doesn't deserve a harsh penalty.
• An advertisement from Carl's Jr. sandwiches features a robot coming home to an apartment, feeding its pet goldfish, sitting down at a table, and attempting to eat a sandwich. The problem with this being that the robot can't eat anything because it has no mouth. After getting frustrated, its pet goldfish swallows a bubble, which the robot evidently takes to be mocking it. It attempts to shoot the goldfish with lasers from its eyes, only for the lasers to bounce off its tank and destroy most of the apartment, with the commercial ending with the dejected robot's arm falling out of its socket where it was cut. The slogan? "Machines can't eat sandwiches, so they shouldn't make them, that's just the way it is". Even with the attempted goldfish murder, it isn't that hard to feel sorry for the poor robot and find the slogan more than a bit condescending (or even racist) given the context.
• The Axe's astronaut commercials, where a guy risks his life to save a girl— only for her to run to the astronaut.
• An Xfinity commercial depicts a man calling his friends and asking them to help him move, with them badly lying to get out of it (a woman shopping, but pretending to be sick; a man on the beach, but pretending to be swamped at work). The concept ignores that he is calling them last minute, expecting them to drop everything with no notice to come do intensive work for him.
• The KiaOra Crow. All he's doing is asking the boy and his dog if he can have a drink. The boy is quite happy to share it with everyone else he meets but, for some unexplained reason, he just won't let poor old Crow have any.
• The commercial for Dr. Scholl's skin tag removers, which feature a mother and daughter lovingly complimenting each other's looks as they hang out. The little girl suddenly exclaims "ew, what's that!" and points to her mother's skin tag, causing the mother to lament about wanting to get rid of it. Many audience members found the daughter's comment to be rude and insulting. The commercial started some heated flame wars online over the little girl's behavior, and subsequently the product advertised started getting bad reviews. (Many of said reviews bringing up the commercial.)
• The commercials for Abilify, an anti-depressant, chose to personify clinical depression as a cartoon bathrobe with sleepy Muppet eyes that a regular cartoon woman can take off once she's on medication, but the depression robe is adorable. As a nod to how it is in real life, she takes depression everywhere she goes as a constant companion. It even helps her fill out paperwork for itself! When she finally takes the bathrobe off, it dejectedly slumps in its seat. You know this trope is serious when a commercial can make you feel bad for depression itself.
• Buddy the dog from the infamous GoDaddy.com commercial that was separated from his owner and trekked a ridiculous length to get home. Buddy's owner was happy beyond belief... because she had just sold him on her GoDaddy.com website. It didn't make people want a website, but it did make people feel so bad for Buddy that they wanted to punch the owner in the head and adopt Buddy themselves. Needless to say, the commercial was taken off the air.
• The "Knock Off Nigel" adverts in Britain, intended to promote awareness of copyright infringement. The first one features Nigel minding his own business in a pub, when a singer starts harassing him, and his uptight bitch girlfriend throws a watch in his drink when she finds out that he found it in the street. Then they all join in with the song. The second advert featured him at work, and being treated much the same. Playground bullying much?
• The "Don't advertise your phone to burglars" advert definitely makes the so-called burglar seem like he's minding his own business, while the so-called victim won't shut up about the great phone he has, making him seem like a dodgy salesman, and therefore the real criminal.
• Similarly to the Abilify example above, the absolutely adorable anthropomorphic bladder in the Mybetriq commercials. Although at most the little guy is a nuisance, the commercials has the sufferers comes very close to losing their temper with it when in reality its problems aren't technically their fault (or their fault alone).
• 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 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 the early 2000s, there was a self-deprecating Canadian series of Juicy Fruit ads where a guy with a guitar happily sang the gum's jingle, prior to somebody coming up to snatch and smash his guitar. The joke is referencing the jingle's infamous Ear Worm tendencies, but more than one person felt sympathetic for the guy, given he's simply minding his own business and having a good time (heck, in one instance, he's even playing to a group of people who seem to enjoy his presence).
• A commercial for Idaho potatoes has a mother serving potatoes to her family, only for everyone to turn on her and throw out her food when she reveals that the potatoes were grown in her backyard, not bought from Idaho farmers. It's tongue-in-cheek, but it's hard not to feel bad for the woman who went to the extra effort to grow her own crops (which, judging by everyone's reaction before they learned where they came from, weren't even bad) instead of buying them, only to be met with people ruining her food out of pure spite (the grandpa even puts his dentures in her daughter's dish!).