How do we measure marketing, advertising, and PR strategies and tactics? Well, we often argue about what is great, but we rarely (if ever) argue about what’s bad. Very simply, marketing that makes us cringe.

Bad marketing is more than just wasted time or money. It’s lost opportunity. The 2 Guyz Larry created the 9 P’s of Marketing (Planning, Product, People, Price, Promotion, Place, Partners, Presentation, and Passion). There is so much that goes into good marketing, that’s it’s easy to go astray. Unfortunately, for some, it’s easy to turn not-so-good marketing into bad marketing.

Bottom Line: Some ads should have never run, some press events should never have happened, and some brands have just taken terrible turns for the worse.

A major lesson learned: If anyone in a client meeting or in the approval process should have said, “No way,” listen to them, and take another look at what you are doing.  

So, for your marketing “guilty pleasure”, we present to you, the 2019 Baddie Awards!

cringe  •   /krinj/   verb

bend one’s head and body away from an ad or promotion in fear or in a servile manner.

“they cringed away from the ad and thought negatively about the brand, for almost forever.”

1. (tie) Juul

Juul’s “Product.” Mint was their most popular showing mint’s huge popularity among underage and teenage vapers.  Mint accounted for about 70% of Juul’s sales in the U.S.  Juul Labs has immediately stopped online sales of their mint “Products” in October, it was last month that Juul Labs announced that they would stop the sale of flavors other than tobacco, mint and menthol.

1. (tie) Santa Anita Race Track

Santa Anita Race Track, with its 37 racing and training deaths of horses. Do we need to continue a sport which horses die at a rate of 1.68 for every 1000 starts?  Think about track and field and human. How is this acceptable to entertain bettors and race track goers? During the 2019 season, there were 493 horse racing fatalities. Enough is enough.

3. Political Ads

Any 2019 political ad, since most are not believable. We can’t wait for 2020. That’s sarcasm.

4. Cheez-It Pizza

The stuffed Cheez-it pizza from Pizza Hut. It gets on our list because of how it looks. 

5. M&M’s

M&M’s running the “Spy” spot in their cinema advertising, running over and over and over. This cinema spot appeared on last year’s list and is on again. Still running. Enough is enough. Frequency of obnoxious ads makes them worse.

6. IHOP

IHOP’s Happy Mother’s Day to ALL the moms out there!” They tweeted a bizarre image of a towering pile of pancakes seemingly stacked inside a woman’s body, via an ultrasound. Inappropriate image and promotion. “If you have pancakes in your tum tum does that make you a pancake mum mum?”

7. Movie Pass

Last September 14, 2019, MoviePass was shut down. MoviePass, the subscription service that spent enormous amounts of venture capitalists’ money subsidizing movie tickets in a bid to upend the theater business model, is officially died. Last year Movie Pass said it had 2,000,000 subscribers at $9.95/month, letting movie goers see a movie a day. 30 movies a month. When it seems unbelievable, it usually is. Too much demand. Couldn’t sustain and had to take out loans. Dropped from 30 movies a month to 3, plus limited access to wide-release movies during peak demand. Not the same deal. Couldn’t generate any more investor money. DOA.

8. Tesla

Tesla’s Pickup Cybertruck Press Conference. Tesla is cool. Elon Musk is cool. But who told them to demonstrate breakproof glass by throwing a rock at it…twice?!?!? And doing without being 100% sure it would work. That was a PR gaff that will be remembered (and enjoyed) by many years to come.

9. Facebook

Facebook. Facebook makes over $50 billion a year. They have more than a billion users. Yet they just can’t seem to get this whole “security” thing together. This year we learned more about Cambridge Analytica and their access to all of our private data, data breeches, fines (some $5 billions of fines from the FTC alone!) Facebook…we like you, but we don’t need you to survive. You must protect our data better, or we will leave, and many are threatening to do so in anticipation of the 2020 elections!

10. Boeing

The 737 Max Scandal has really tarnished Boeing’s once rock-solid image.

The Boeing 737 MAX is a narrow-body commercial aircraft series, the fourth generation of the Boeing 737. FAA has said it again, and again: Boeing’s 737 Max is not ready for certification.

There’s a rise in vaping among teens.

Is that evidence that Juul is marketing to kids? Not yet. But it is evidence of something.

The facts: Juul’s first promotional campaign “Vaporized,” started in 2015. Later Juul-related posts exponentially exploded on Instagram and Twitter with photos, posted by young people using the Juul.

Vaping among teens jumped 78% from 2017 to 2018, according to reports.

Now the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating the Marketing practices of Juul.

Standford University School of Medicine felt it interesting enough to conduct a pretty impressive research paper on Juul’s early marketing. Click here to read the report.

To The 2 Guyz, Juul is confusing people with their messaging and PR. 

To us, Marketing is more than promotion.  We teach and consult that Marketing has many components including targeting (or people), product, place, presentation, partners, and promotion (see Londre’s 9P’s of Marketing).

Test marketing is a test of one or more of the 9P’s of Marketing. It shows intent, thinking, and possible strategic direction.

Specifically, the FTC is investigating whether the e-cigarette firm Juul Labs used media influencers and other marketing and promotional activities to appeal to minors.

Juul is saying it’s not a big deal.

• “FTC probe examines whether e-cigarette maker engaged in deceptive marketing; Juul says it hasn’t targeted minors, has stopped using paid influencers.” 
• “Our paid influencer program, which was never formalized, was a small, short-lived pilot” that ended last year,” a Juul spokesman.

“Really?” says Londre of The 2 Guyz. Their own words add up to marketing and promotional practices, with sales being one of the ultimate determinants of marketing success. There are sales to teens. Teens are using.

By Juul’s own words they said “test marketing and promotion.” A pilot or test is formal.  They used ten former smokers to “sell and promote.”  It is a marketing test. They were conducting formal and strategic sales. Based on the experiences of these two marketing professionals and teachers, this shows intent.

Juul says it has never marketed to youth and that its products are intended for adult cigarette smokers. But teens are buying and using.

Okay, let’s look at some visual evidence. What do you think of this marketing material…is it targeting senior middle-aged or senior citizens? We think not.

Juul is using mass media to sell the product.  Teens are on the street and in cars and the message is getting out there.

The 2 Guyz On Marketing teach that we live in a celebrity-crazed culture. Londre recently found an ad for the Centers for Disease Control using deceased Leonard Nimoy, best know for his role as Spock on the original Star Trek television series, a smoker who promoted cigarette smoking. Nimoy died in 2015. 

His daughter and son-in-law gave their permission to use the likeness of Nimoy to educate people about the harmful effects of smoking/.

Why use celebrities:

1. They may attract attention
2. May increase a company or product’s image, and in this example the positives brought to you by the Centers for Disease Control.
3. May boost company or product’s awareness
4. Breaks through clutter
5. Exploits celebrity’s popularity
6. May increases company or product’s credibility

But the 2 Guyz have some questions for any brand manager:

1. Is the celebrity appropriate for the product or service?  Nimoy did quit smoking but developed COPD
2. Does celebrity subtract from product or service?  The 2 Guyz feel in this case he adds to the credibility.
3. Does the celebrity add value, or generate a good impression?  Nimoy helps sell the negatives of smoking
4. It used to be about “gut feelings.” Now brand managers are asking to, “Show me the evidence that this is the right star or celebrity.”
5. Does the celebrity add to the product’s image?  He did develop COPD.

Other issues come to light with celebrity endorsements and spokes people. What happens to a brand when there’s a problem with the celebrity (think Tiger Woods or Colin Kaepernick. How long with the celebrity be with the brand? What happens if the relationship sours?

Long-term studies show celebrities can add awareness and potentially marketshare to a brand’s sales, but brands must carefuly measure the cost versus the increase in sales. Long-term studies have shown increases tend to be smaller than may might think, often in the low single digits of sales increases.

What do you think?

Serena Williams narrates the moving spot that depicts woman after woman, girl after girl, in sporting situations. Williams lists the words so often used to describe women athletes: nuts, delusional, dramatic, etc.

Late in the spot, Williams comes to the word crazy, and rather than fight it, the dialog embraces it. Nike, through Williams and a superbly-edited commercial appropriate (and rightly so) the term “crazy”. Yes, women athletes are crazy…in a good way.

The spot ends with the lines, “So if they wanna call you crazy, fine. Show them what crazy can do.”

Homerun. Touchdown. Goal. Slam dunk. Nike “Just Do It” rides again.

Nike has strayed here and there, and many question the strategy of the Colin Kaepernick ad of last year, but with Dream Crazy they have returned to the roots that helped build a superbrand.

Two Guyz Brian said of the spot, “It’s why I got into advertising in the first place, spots like this. I love the story it tells. I love the emotion it evokes. And I love the message it conveys. It makes me want to ‘just do it’, and it makes me want to buy something Nike right now.”

And creating a spot that is about the power of women and female athletes that MOST guys will like is not an easy feat.

The 2 Guyz On Marketing teach that emotion is a much more powerful communications tool than logic the vast majority of the time. Done properly, emotional appeals get into your psyche and your soul. They touch you in ways you were not expecting, and not prepared for. And that makes them both powerful and memorable.

A bit crazy? Brilliantly crazy.

As an owner, operator, supervisor, marketing executive, manager or employee, can your customers, clients or users tell the difference between your product or service and your competition?  

Do you have strategic and significant difference? A U.S.P., unique selling proposition?

Every brand should have a story to tell whether they are in the Super Bowl or not.

Are you telling the right story? Is your brand and story reaching the right people, your customers, and your potential purchasers?

Here are the insights from The 2 Guyz On Marketing.

1. Gladys Knight hit it out of the park with her rendition of the National Anthem.
2. Pepsi didn’t get their money’s worth with the halftime show of Maroon 5, Travis Scott and Big Boi.
3. One of our favorite spots was for Amazon. They used the celebrities of Mark and Scott Kelly and Harrison Ford and how Alexa can misunderstand.
4. Mint Mobile hit the mother lode in bad taste with “Chunky Milk.” When the 2 Guyz presented the Mint Mobile spot to a university class, none of the students liked the spot and many cringed.
5. CBS promoted almost all of their shows and programming. The number one advertiser by number of TV spots and promotion: CBS who brought to all of us Super Bowl LIII.
6. The 2 Guyz liked the message for Bumble. Giving women the right to make the first move, but the spot with Sabrina Williams wasn’t impactful enough.
7. While there were fewer cars advertised this year in the Super Bowl, the number one brand promoted: Mercedes Benz. Super Bowl Liii was televised from Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta, and its signage was constantly seen.
8. Looking at U.S.P.’s or unique selling propositions, it was Bud Light who said Coors Light and Miller Light use corn syrup in their brewing.  Bud Light doesn’t use corn syrup. While done in the “dilly dilly” style, it is possibly the most hard hitting beer ad in years.
9. Another U.S.P. of note: Some 33.3% of their cars will be electrified by 2025. Impressive.
10. As predicted by The 2 Guyz, Persil rated in the bottom five of all advertisers.
11. Stella Artois used celebrities Jeff Bridges and Jessica Parker in character from famous movies and hit shows. One mispronounced Stella Artois. Has Stella been promoting all of these years and yet potential beer purchasers do not know how to say “Stella Artois?”  

The 2 Guyz teach and consult that the right Marketing belief or practice is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the minds of each individual employee in trying to satisfy the consumer and in the advertising of the company.  

As Management guru Peter F. Drucker once said: “The aim of Marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him (her/it) and sells itself.  This is one of the reasons the Nine P’s of marketing were created. “People” or targeting was somewhat forgotten in the traditional 4 P’s of the Marketing Mix, but is a major, significant part of the Nine P’s of Marketing.

,TV spots cost the most in history, up to $5.3M per :30 and that did not include production, agency fees or creative.

As for ads, we definitely saw a few trends. Here’s a rundown of some of the things we learned from this year’s Superbowl of Advertising.

• Trying to be cool doesn’t work. Being cool isn’t something you do, it’s something you are. We ask every year, why not feature the product.? Just putting a rapper in an ad doesn’t mean you’ll be successful. That was Pepsi’s philosophy with Steve Carell not being funny with Lil Jon and Cardi B.
• Downers don’t play. If you don’t get our attention, and don’t keep it, you lose. Think Turbo Tax, Turkish Air, and ADT. The advertisers need to think of the home TV environment and the amount of drinking, especially on east coast.
• Funny plays well when there is a message. Bud Light actually had a message about ingredients. It was about what their competitors are putting into beer., Who knew corn syrup was being used? Alexa made fun of themselves, in a good way. Hyundai hooked us with the elevator spot.
• If we don’t know who you are, tell us, and tell us what you do, otherwise, we don’t care. Bumble, Mint Mobile, and Persil are guilty as charged.
• Preach to the choir. NFL killed it with their 100-year kickoff promotion. Nicely done. Brought out the personalities of the stars.
• Tugging at heart strings or strong advocacy messages resonated. Verizon, Microsoft, Google, and the Washington Post all had winners with smart ads.
• Changing perceptions is difficult, but possible. Stella Artois and KIA both had memorable ads that asked us to see things in a new light. Or as Londre says, has Stella spent so much and knew people didn’t know how to pronounce it.  It’s beer drinkers who have to order.
• Boring is bad. Wix’s popular Karli Kloss ads played like they were old and stale on the big Superbowl stage.

Superbowl advertising is a time to be special, to make a big impression. It’s sad to see wasting the chance for a big audience and a big message.  Kudos to those who succeeded. Back to the drawing room for those who didn’t.

Want to see Ad Meter‘s full rundown of the best and worst? Click here.

And then it pops up. Or, “poops” up, if you will.

Air Wick’s new VIP (Very Important Pooper) spray rears its, well, less than attractive head.

Think back a year or two, and PooPourri.com went viral with their sweet British accented-spokeswoman chatting cleverishly about the indiscretions of bathroom smells. The spot walks right to the edge of propriety, but somehow straddles it just enough to keep it fun, and not gross.

Unfortunately Air Wick crosses the line. It could have straddled the line, but they chose not. The creatives on this thought a full frame shot of a older man, an airline pilot, sitting on the loo, with shorts around his ankle.

The 2 Guyz like funny spots as much as anyone. Heck, we’ve written and created advertising that gets close, and yes, sometimes crosses the line, but feel it’s only worth it if you’re in a competitive position to capitalize upon it. This is usually reserved for a small, unknown brand that needs to create a name for itself, and shock value matters.

Think GoDaddy.

We’re not puritans here. Far from it. But we do like guiding our clients down paths of long prosperity.

Not sure this spot fits the bill.

Baddies awarded by the 2 GUYZ On Marketing are simply unbelievable, inappropriate, lacking authenticity, bad, and/or horrible efforts in any area of marketing. It can be a concept, creative, production or execution of marketing and advertising strategies and tactics.

But not just anyone or anything deserves a Baddie. “Not good” is not bad enough. Baddie are call outs for marketing, promotional and advertising ideas that should have never happened.

The Baddies:

• They make us cringe.
• They lack taste, sensibility, or propriety
• And, as the 2 Guys on Marketing teach, these marketing and advertising executions are lost opportunities.

In discussing Baddies, a quality we measure is that “it never should have been approved. Anyone in the client meeting or in the approval process should have said: “No way.”

cringe – /krinj/ – verb: bend one’s head and body away from an ad or promotion in fear or in a servile manner.
“they cringed away from the ad and thought negatively about the brand or company,  forever.”

So here, for the first time ever, are the 2 Guyz On Marketing’s Baddie Awards for 2018.

10. Domino’s Pizza: In September, a Russian Domino’s franchise owner launched the “Dominos Forever” campaign. Just tattoo Domino’s and you would get 100 Domino’s pizzas a year for life. First off, not sure that’s really the kind of promotion you want…tattoos can fade, sag, scar, etc. In this case, the response was overwhelming. Domino’s had to restrict the offer after they were inundated with people getting Domino’s tattoo. This whiz-bang campaign was supposed to last months, but it was pulled within a day. .

9. Movie Pass: In 2018 Movie Pass said it had 2,000,000 subscribers at $9.95/month, letting movie goers see a movie a day. That’s 30 movies a month. To the 2 Guyz, when something seems unbelievable, it usually is. Too much demand. Couldn’t sustain and had to take out loans. This product and marketing offering dropped from 30 movies a month to three, plus limited access to wide-release movies during peak demand. Not the same deal for consumers. Now it can’t generate little investor money. This reminds us of the dot.com bubble days, what startups believed that somehow, someway, horrible business models could somehow “make it up in the volume.” We think that Movie Pass likened their business to gym memberships, which go largely unused. Well, they proved that avid movie goers WILL use a “too good to be true” service.

8. Burger King: Burger King launched their Smartphone Social Media Campaign. The promotional idea included the activation of Burger King’s list of burger ingredients, which were posted on Wikipedia. Problem: Hackers altered and added special ingredients such as “cyanide.” The 2 Guyz teach that user-generated material has to have monitors and carefully watched and legally approved. Wikipedia is policed by a highly active fan-base, and is easily updated by users. In this way Burger King not only lost control of the message, the message changed…for the worse. Positive PR, turned negative or “negatory,” as they say on the street. Burger King slipped on a really big banana peel. As we say, “know thy customer, know thy competition, know thy media.”

7. LeVar Ball: Do we really need a reason? Okay, here’s a few. LeVar Ball talking “at,” not “with” any media. Media management is challenging for professionals. Letting LeVar Ball represent you to the media is like handing someone a stick of dynamite with a lit fuse. He also preceded to piss off or insult the Lakers, UCLA, President Trump, China, Steph Curry, and a host of others. Big Baller brand is laughed at by pros and financial experts. And his Big Baller Brand was given an F grade by the Better Business Bureau. .

6. Papa John’s: John Schnatter, founder of Papa John’s, suing his own company, prompting loss of sales. Really? Pretty sure this isn’t in any business or Marketing textbooks, the strategy of suing your own company being good for business. Terrible for partners and for sales generation. Allegations of racial epithets, media rants, and blaming the NFL for bad pizza sales…not smart promotion of the brand. John’s action fit under many of the 9P’s of Marketing.

5. Diet Coke: Cringe worthy Diet Coke with flavors. Trying to sell Diet Coke by giving buyers the reasons, too, with the pixie dancing girl. A non-scientific poll conducted by the 2 Guys On Marketing on Gen Z and Millennials indicated this campaign, and the Super Bowl spot in particular, for “Twisted Mango”, was universally panned. Marketing “cool” is very difficult, and the risks frequently do not justify the rewards.

4. Ford: The world before #MeToo and after…it’s all different now! Ford stepped in the poo on this one by running a horrible visual in their ad, three women were bound, gagged, and stuffed in the trunk of a new Ford. Really Ford? Even before Harvey Weinstein this was bad taste at best. Press, media and PR was brutal.

3. Any 2018 Political Ad.:More specifically any 2018 political ad with Nancy Pelosi or Donald Trump. There were over 1,500 TV spots featuring President Trump or Minority Speaker Nancy Pelosi neither of them was running for a local or statewide office. David Ogilvy would say an ad is more successful when you put the “product” in. Were these selling local politicians, or building the brands of these two Washington politi-brands? And political advertising in general stooped to new lows of insensitivity, lying, and bad taste.

And tied for #1:

1. (tie) Michael Avenatti: Michael Avenatti’s Campaign for President ended with his arrest. He’s the lawyer for adult film star Stormy Daniels. A “spokesperson” with repeated exposure across mainstream media much of the year, he was arrested in Los Angeles on a domestic violence charge, according to several media outlets. Avenatti, freed on bail, said he was “not going to be intimidated.” Add the bankruptcy issues and partners’ disputes, plus eviction from his offices for lack of payment, this makes him one of our poster kids for bad Marketing planning. As a brand, his work has not gained him brand value, it has plummeted. He’s a “total” PR nightmare.

1. (tie) Ford: While the recent Southern California fires raged, taking lives, communities and homes, this local Ford dealership in Simi Valley, California ran an ad making light of the fires. Really dumb move. Cringeworthy or is it: “cringe-worthy?”.. it’s both, no matter how you spell it. Local business are like neighbors. Good neighbors? This was a bad move that should have NEVER passed approval.

Congratulations to all of this year’s winners. May you all hire smart professionals and/or graduates of our classes, who have hopefully learned to not to make the same mistakes as you!

This ad was published by Ford’s Simi Valley dealership two days ago, and reads:

“Well we didn’t catch fire but these deals are smoking hot. Take a look!”

This dealer is in Simi Valley, the community that sits just to the north of the Woolsey Fire Perimeter and northeast of the Hill fire.  In fact, Simi had a few flare ups from the fires in the southern part of their valley.

What were they thinking? They are in the general fire area, and while both fires continue to burn (and neither fully contained), they ran this ad.

It’s just not appropriate promotion! In fact it was just downright dumb. With at least 44 people dead from the awful fires in California, and The 2 Guyz on Marketing personally knowing several people who have lost their homes and all their worldly possessions, we rate this as one of the worst ads ever.

A spokesperson for the dealership apologized, but was it enough?  “Recently, we expressed ourselves in a way that does not reflect our values…We are sorry. Simi Valley is our home and, like all of us who live here, we will continue to assist during these difficult times.”

Think before you promote during a disaster. Don’t take advantage of the situation for personal or business gain. Help those affected. Help first responders. Heck, take pictures of the people you help and post on social media. But don’t capitalize.

The first of what is likely to be many Baddie Awards.

Have we gone too far to shut down neighborhood lemonade stands? Having the police close down lemonade stands?

What you may not know the police were asking for three permits for health and business operation reasons. They needed not just one sink, but three. Did you know kids can’t accept money? Cookies need to be packaged.  Is this absurd?

Kids learn a lot at a lemonade stand. You have Planning, Product (lemonade and maybe cookies or cupcakes), Price, signage, national media or Promotion, Place, Customers or People, Passion and Presentation.

Don’t we want to teach entrepreneur skills? The 2 Guyz teach these skills in every marketing class. We invite entrepreneurship!

For this Denver lemonade stand they also got an advocacy group Lemonade Stand Mama plus a petition to change local laws fighting for them and others.

Do these kids really need permits? Really?

Surprisingly, Utah recently passed legislation that exempts kids under 18 from needing permits. Good on Utah. bad on Colorado.

So what’s the twist? What the 2 Guyz like most is an actual lemonade brand is putting up legal funds. It’s powdered lemonade brand Country Time. They have offered to reimburse these kids and their lemonade stands for up to $60,000 in permits and fines. Good on Country Time. Turning lemons or powered lemonade into lemonade.

The 2 Guyz support local entrepreneurs for sure. Great use of PR and Promotion.