Escalate - Marketing Critique » rejected ads http://skal8.com Marketing to consumers in control Tue, 01 Feb 2011 05:12:26 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 The buzz and PR strategy of a rejected ad http://skal8.com/branding/the-buzz-and-pr-strategy-of-a-rejected-ad/ http://skal8.com/branding/the-buzz-and-pr-strategy-of-a-rejected-ad/#comments Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:21:28 +0000 Steve Hammer http://skal8.com/?p=84 Continue reading →]]> The NFL and the super bowl have recently been the targets of an agressive buzz strategy that works quite well, unfortunately.   Submit an ad that gets rejected, but follows all of the listed rules.  GoDaddy went from just another web registrar to a near household name by making a racy ad.  The ad made fun of the prior years “wardrobe malfunction.” and the NFL wasn’t done smarting over the overexposure.  Several recuts later, GoDaddy made an advertisment deemed acceptable.  However they took their outrage to the press who was more than happy to let them tell their story.

In the end, the ad wasn’t very good, but they had more than made up for it in buzz.  They’ve repeated the stunt for several years, by always trying to push the letter of the law to the limit.

The latest in the string of “PRstunt-erists” is a dating website that promotes affairs and cheating.  Darren Rovell of CNBC was kind enough to provide them with a blog post about how their ad for the Super Bowl Program was denined.

Darren, when you post links to the site, the PRstunt-erists win.  They could have gotten maybe 100,000 people to notice their ad, and your coverage might generate 10x that.

Personally, I stand behind the NFL and their decison to deny the ad.  In fact to atone, I think they should offer a free ad in the program to the dating site that is the polar opposite.  One that is not for married people and is free – the free dating site downtoearth.com.

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