So in first place on the list of “worst current commercial campaigns” has to be the Holiday Inn ads with the three blond guys making fools of themselves, right? What exactly is the message that Holiday Inn is trying to send here?
- “Only dorks stay at our hotels.”
- “If you don’t want to talk to people like these guys, stay somewhere else.”
- “Holiday Inn: We’ll make you uncomfortable in every sense of the word.”
Avis did something like this a few years ago, albeit not quite as bad, with their campaign “What if we didn’t try harder?” After which, you’d get 15-20 seconds of a customer having a very bad experience at an Avis rental car outlet.
Marketing and advertising are certainly inexact sciences, but to me, a good ad should have two or three things: recall, a positive message about the brand or product, and perhaps a call to action depending on what the commercial is advertising. The worst ads have great recall but leave the viewer with a very negative impression of the brand or product. The Holiday Inn ads are unmistakable – as soon as I see any of those three idiots on the screen, I’m flying for the remote – and they’ve made it clear to me that Holiday Inn is the antithesis of cool. And yet these ads have been running for over a year, and I’m sure we’ll be inundated with them again in the playoffs. Good luck cleaning up that brand image after you’ve spent a year and a half defecating all over it.
See, I always interpreted those commercials, when they first aired, as “Stay in Holiday Inn, and get the chance to annoy Joe Buck!”
And frankly, that’s the kind of thing I can get behind.
I actually liked [what I believe to be] the original one in the series, where two of the guys are trying to one-up each other regarding the great things they’ve picked up with their Holiday Inn points. It featured this unforgettable exchange:
“I got my son a unicycle.”
“Is he going to be a clown?”
“We hope so.”
But, yeah, after that one — which was a dorky-but-humorous way to highlight the points program — they kinda lost the plot and fell in love with themselves.
I forgot about that one. It was much faster-paced, too, almost like they were going for some old-school repartee. I’m wondering if they changed ad agencies but kept the concept and actors.
Anybody that willingly chooses Joe Buck as their pitchman has already lost me.
I had to take the CSET English tests today, and one of the short response questions asked me to describe a recent commercial advertising campaign and how it encourages consumers to use that service/product. For five minutes, all I could think of was “Where is this now, Jamaica?” and horrible renditions of “Take it on the Run.” Thankfully, I overcame this and wrote about HD TVs, but for a few minutes, I was in hot water. : )