The Museum Of Marketing Madness
Curating, skewering and roasting the worst of advertising to comic perfection
Everybody knows sales drop off the closer you get to the freight elevator.
The Manager had to find a place to shove the Deer Park water bottles they were pushing. Knowing this was not a good spot he asked one of the stock boys to make a simple sign, nothing fancy. Good signage is the mark of smart marketing.
And there it is.
And the stuff just flew off the shelves. Flew.
Well I talked to Nature and she said:
“I would never drink soda! I can drink ANY mineral water I want since I created them all! At the end of a long day, however, I do love a fine glass of Chevalier-Montrachet La Cabotte Chardonnay.
“Sierra Mist?? I friggin’ created the real mist IN the Sierras!! There’s no sugar in that! In fact, smartypants, the Sierras are not known for mist as the air rarely gets oversaturated with moisture. Just sayin'”
The thing that first attracted me to this Marketing Madness was the “Baker’s Dozen” highlighted in red below. So I decided to see if I could come up with 13 (baker’s dozen, get it?) reasons why this website is awful.
1. Notice the big white space on the side of the page? That’s because whoever built this page, never thought there might be a screen that’s larger than a piece of 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper!
2. BTW, on a phone it’s even crappier. Responsive much?
3. Nice try adding some, oh let’s call it ‘graphics’ up there. Ya have your basic business-suit, white lady arms folded at a resolution of twenty-crappy by forty-crapola pixels.
4. While we’re trashing that image selection, let’s not forget the diluted gang of pseudo business people drained of all color but blue.
5. Which brings us to the business itself: background checks. The subtext here is “I’m smiling and I have my arms folder because they’re doing a background check behind me and I have no idea who these blue people are and I am SURE I’m gonna pass because I’m a confident business woman with my arms folded smiling (at a very low resolution)”
6. Logo? Another fail. 3 curved horn sorta triangle shapes that say, “We’re a triangle. We think. We are Three. We represent, uh, three things.”
7. While we’re on that Three Thing, what’s under the logo. Of course, the Three Things. But 2 are things and the other is a preposition or some temporal factor. Which one of these is not like the other? “Productivity confidence now” does not a sentence make.
This calls for a modern copywriting trope: One. Word. Sentence.
“Productivity.” Boom … ya got a sentence.
“Confidence.” Another sentence!
“Now.” Three.
8. Let’s not forget Subheads … and what an assortment! We have one that is 19px and the lead-in to a paragraph with real punctuation. Then 4 others go to 21px size but, let’s not be TOO consistent. One Doesn’t Have Initial Caps! One has italics!
9. Blue. Too much blue. Boring, plain, just-another-corporate-site blue. Blew it.
10. All fields on the form are required but then do you need to have an asterisk for all fields…which are required anyway?
11. The Baker’s Dozen! What the MF is this?? A Baker’s Dozen of what? If you’re #1 do I need to know there’s 12 others behind you? Why even make reference to some no-name organization that gives out prizes to 12 other companies?
12. 2009?! This Baker’s Dozen has been getting moldy for 12 years and you’re still telling us about it like it’s yesterday!?
13 And who is HRO? And why does it look like there’s an exclamation after their name?
Stick with the words copy peoples! I’m trying to resolve this equation and it’s just not coming out.
Do I add the Immune Health + Digestive Health + Gut Health and get Immune Digestive Gut over 3Health?
OR?
Add Peach Blended Yogurt + Immune Digestive Gut divided by 3Health or am I dividing the Immune Digestive Gut 3 Health INTO the Peach Blended Yogurt?
And isn’t Peach Blended Yogurt a set whose members are Immune Digestive Gut 3Health? I may be overthinking this one but clearly the copywriter was not thinking.
From the Museum of Marketing Madness Archives, I know they merged back in 2012 with United. But even before the merger, and things were sloppy, this is just sad.
Our commitment remains the same: When you fly in our planes, you will land. You might land in the wrong airport. You might crash.
But you will land.
From the Copywriting School of Repetition, another example of ridiculous repetition for the sake of repetition, repetition.
We see this so often, it seems normal. It’s not normal.
It’s not even normal, normal.
With a sign like this it’s that simple; your customer knows who you are and what you sell.
None of this “Old Navy,” “Banana Republic,” “Victoria’s Secret” vagueness.
How do you get kids to eat crappy food? Why create a cartoon character and have him him/her do surreal, physically impossible things, of course!?! …with cheese….
This is just naughty. I’m sorry … it just is.
Three steps?!? I thought you just pull them off the shelf and stomp on them!
