Don't Trend On Me!

A place to discuss terrible public relations and marketing.

Monday

02

February 2015

Boycott Ragu

by Conrad Updog

The Super Bowl was once a place for advertisers to display their best work, a fusion of art and commerce that was Distinctly American even if it was sort of embarrassing that the annual zenith of our creative endeavors was reached mostly for the purpose of selling light beer.

In recent years, some brands have attempted to hijack the spotlight without paying for ad time by shoehorning their products into conversations people are trying to have with their friends online.

Today, we celebrate last night's most unbearable work from our friends in the real-time marketing game, who sacrificed the opportunity to spend time with their loved ones this weekend in order to compose messages about products that sound (Velveeta's "Liquid Gold") and taste (Miller Light) like urine.

Last night's standout brand was Ragu, on whose social media team I do not wish any serious physical harm, but whose members probably do deserve to be afflicted with a non-life threatening sexually transmitted disease. At the very least, everyone involved with @ragusauce should feel a very real sense of personal shame for the awfulness they have put into the world.

Throughout the game, the brand subjected innocent Twitter users to a stream of horrible, forced "puns" linking spaghetti sauce to football that contained all the #authenticity of an American brand of Italian-style pasta sauce currently owned by a Japanese foodstuffs conglomerate.

These fuckboys knew who would be performing at the Super Bowl halftime show FOR MONTHS, and this is the best they could come up with.

Elsewhere, Cinnabon played off the legitimately good "Like A Girl" commercial with a ... reference? joke? IDK ... that read a little bit like it was encouraging women to have their partners jizz on their butts. Totally cool if you and a consenting partner enjoy it, but I am not sure whether it qualifies as a feminist act!

Ed highlights Philadelphia brand cream cheese coming with some of that GOOD SHIT, which you know is GOOD SHIT because the authors included the phrase touchdown. #Timely #FootballLingo #Creamcheese

A fun fact is that Q-Tips spends roughly half of its annual social media marketing budget lobbying the NFL to let A Tribe Called Quest play the halftime show.

Until that glorious day, we are stuck with shit like this.

Last year, Tide spent the entire Super Bowl making annoying-assed Vines based on other companies' ads.

Even though spokesperson Anne Candido told Ad Age the brand got "a lot of great engagement" last year, it shifted its strategy this year to making bad jokes about the game instead of the ads.

No one was more excited by the tweets than CNBC's Eli Langer. (AKA Young Rovell, AKA Mr. Every Mobile Marketing Conference Ever)

Some good stuff here from Foldgers, which could not have tried any less to do something creative or funny.

And our final piece of evidence that brands are meaningless comes from the folks at Duracell.

Last year, the battery brand ran a touching ad during the game highlighting Seattle Seahawks fullback Derrick Coleman, who is deaf.

This year, it made basically the same crappy joke twice, then cheered the Patriots' victory.

alt

So much for brand loyalty.

Conrad Updog

What's updog?

About

PR, advertising and marketing consistently do terrible, stupid things, and this is a place where people will write about said terrible things. Email edzitron@edzitron.com with comments, queries or submissions