A Best of (and Worst of) in Advertising

(Billy Mays, rest his soul. Infomercials aren't the same without you.)

Nothing makes class fun like open group discussion, and nothing gets a group talking like our favorites in a topic. In this case, advertising. But I'm sure you already knew that.

When it came to the best, a theme in my group was good mascots. The ones we enjoy seeing onscreen because they're pleasant and likable. The Geico gecko, Jack from Jack-in-the-Box, Flo from Progressive. And of course Billy Mays, the king of informercials, made our list just for his memorable way of pitching his products. Humor was another one. We like to laugh and have fun. If a commercial can make us laugh, they're halfway there. And the more we like your commercial, the more likely we are to remember it.

Picking the worst ads was surprisingly difficult. We tend to want to forget the bad stuff, so a commercial has to go above and beyond in terrible to get remembered, something that's actually easier said than done. We did manage to pick out a few though; the "winners" being GoDaddy.com for commercials of mass confusion, and Dr. Pepper Ten for making a campaign sexist enough to piss off the internet. You know you've done something wrong when people are putting up youtube videos just to rant about your advertising campaign.

(You've just told half your market to piss off because this is a "man's drink." Nope, no way this will attract feminist backlash.)

So, to recap: We like mascots. We like funny. We like it even more when the two come together. We also like it when ad campaigns actually tell you what the product is. Though people tend to not like being told they can't use/eat/drink your whatever because they're girls like a five year old saying girls aren't supposed to play sports.