Successful and Unsuccessful Advertisements.

As part of my course we look at a lot of advertising. We look at what works and what doesn't work. As part of the course we have looked at famous adverts from the past and present. Last week we had to present an effective, and an ineffective advert and discuss why we think that each ad is effective/ineffective.

When I thought of effective campaigns, I couldn't help but think of Coca Cola's "Share a Coke" campaign. Coca Cola replaced the famous logo with Great Britain's most popular names. It shows how doing something very simple can be a great success. Everyone wanted a bottle of Coke with their name replacing the logo! (...Guilty)

Due to social media, there was a 7% increase in sales, the company earned a total of 18 million media impressions, traffic on the Coke Facebook Website increased by 870%, with page "likes" growing by 39%!

Share a Coke had its own tours around the country, so that you could place your name on a Coke bottle.

Share a Coke was a great success over the internet. Thanks to Twitter, hashtagging, Instagram and Facebook, bottles of Coke were almost everywhere.

I think the Share a Coke campaign is a great example that keeping things simple can often turn out to be incredibly successful. Even I, as a consumer bought a bottle of coke which had a friends name on it and sent a picture to him. Sad, I know, but it amused him!

For the ineffective campaign, I chose to discuss the controversial Shameless campaign by Suit Supply, which got banned. I had a lot to say about this photograph. Photographically speaking the shot is well lit, but that's possibly the only positive thing I have to say about this photograph. The Shameless campaign had posters all over stores, they were taken down as many people were offended, and children could easily see the photographs. When I look at this campaign, it says to me "If you wear one of our suits, you can dominate and degrade women!" this is in no way a positive message to give to the public, especially to young children. While researching the story behind the ban of these ads, I discovered that the photographer, Carli Hermes stated that the shots were "Carefully designed and artistic."

As a woman, I struggle to see the artistic side of this campaign. I understand that sex sells in today's society, it always has done. But sugarcoating dominating women for a campaign is not acceptable. 

As part of my research, I asked both men and women how they felt about this advert:

Male no.1: "Honestly, I think it's weird, crude, sexist and ineffective. And I'm not a conservative guy, but if that was on massive boards around the place, I'd consider complaining."

Female no.1 "I cannot see anything good about that picture. All I see is a man dressed in a suit who thinks he has some entitlement to do what the hell he likes with a woman."

Male no.2 "That's a bit naughty/degrading?"

Female no.2 "It looks like a man in a suit who looks as though he has a pick in women. Even the way hes looking at the piece of clothing the women is wearing to see if she lives up to his standard."

I thought I should show an ad which was also effective and ineffective. This is the "Clean your balls" campaign which was aired in Australia. I would have shown the Clean your balls campaign when I was doing my presentation, but it was too long. This advert is effective because it's humorous, shocking and memorable. Although it's ineffective because it's a bit too much on the naughty side and caused controversy down under (no pun intended).

This advert made a lot of people laugh, yet not everybody has the same sense of humour. This advert got banned for being sexist, racist and ageist.

Watch the video and decide for yourself!

I hope you enjoyed reading,

A.