OK, so from an ethical point-of-view, the ad I featured yesterday is waaaaaaaay worse given smoking will kill you rather than help you live a ‘full-on’ life … but in terms of marketing bullshit, this has to take the gold medal.
The smartest praline in the World?
What the hell were they thinking!
Another campaign that says more about the client than the audience.
Seriously, how many more times are companies going to confuse marketing with lying?
Of course they will say they’re just exaggerating or using creative licence … but the fact is, it’s bollocks packaged to satisfy the ego of the client.
While some may say that is a smart way to keep the client on side, the reality is that once the sales figures come in – or the lack of them – they’ll soon forget who told the agency to make such a ridiculous claim and put the business up for pitch.
And if by some grace of god, the sales figures do come in … then the client will take all the credit for their genius [when the likelihood is it’s their distribution power that they should be thanking] and the agency will forever be at the clients whim … that is until the their demand for ever-reduced fees means they literally cannot carry on as they are going.
And everyone loses their job.
Maybe.
Seriously, when I see stuff like this, it literally makes my blood boil over.
Not just because it undermines the industry. Not just because it turns more people off than on. Not even because it means the people with talent are getting held back by the people who will do whatever gets them a pat on the head. But because chocolate is wonderful and lovely and deserves work as charming and emotional as this little spot we recently made for Milka.
FYI: I’m not slagging off Ferraro because I work with Milka. I really like Ferraro chocolateI’m slagging them because this whole ‘smartest praline in the world’ is ridiculous.
But it gets worse.
You see after a bit of searching, I finally tracked their ad down – or at least the German execution of it – and guess what … it didn’t even have anything to do with praline’s, let alone ‘smart ones’, which means it’s even more marketing bollocks than I originally thought.