I suppose it will be the new annual sport to see which company will have to pull its @#$% of an ad campaign by Tuesday after the Super Bowl when their "edgy" ad campaign backfires.
I'm not sure who told HomeAway that accidental injury to babies was hilarious, and, yes... I get that it was a doll, but... you've got 30 seconds to sell a somewhat new idea. Did you want to spend it smushing a baby?
Its pretty clear HomeAway wasn't advocating baby-violence (the doll was labeled "Test Baby", etc...), so I'm not sure I buy that particular argument. And I admit, I laughed when baby Carlos got smacked with a police car door in The Hangover.
Mostly, I just wasn't sure their joke was funny, and it hadn't had 20-odd minutes of screentime to get to that point. It was a one-trick pony of a baby getting smushed, and from the banner ads that popped up on Monday enticing you to upload photos to the HomeAway site (so you could smush your friends' faces), it was pretty clear somebody planned to build a whole campaign around the idea of the smushed baby. Smushed baby = the next Spuds McKenzie.*
But credit where credit is due: If I wanted to tell Groupon how to handle ad controversy, I'd point directly to what HomeAway chose to do: pull the ad, and make a very apologetic public statement. Its even okay to say "look, we tested this and we thought it was okay", as long as you finish with "but we were wrong, and we're taking steps to fix it". I think people know that young companies try new things during the Super Bowl, and you need to try pretty hard to get folks' attention. So, sometimes there's a misfire.
Frankly, I missed the part where on Tuesday, they'd pulled the banner ads.
I'd liked the Vacation-inspired ad from last year. That had seemed kind of funny, and it made me remember the product.** That said, I find the idea of living in someone else's home totally creepy, so, no... I didn't use the product. God made Marriot hotels for a reason.
*if you have to ask who Spuds is/ was, you're going to make me feel very old
**anybody else get creeped out that Beverly D'Angelo seemingly will not age?
Film. Comics. Sci-Fi. Superheroes. Pulp. Noir. History. Superman. 20th Century Archaeology.
How did I miss all of these ads during the Superbowl? I was there. The TV was on. I can only assume that I was too busy cramming shrimp and cheese into my mouth during the commercial breaks to get offended.
ReplyDelete