Gross Ads Grab Attention

by lisa ~ July 16, 2009

July 16, 2009 - A municipal government board in the U.K. has created an advertising campaign that, in my humble opinion, is one of the grossest ever. Featuring a little girl eating feces because a local resident didn’t pick up after his dog, it has been widely derided after being mentioned by the BBC.

“Dog fouling” is apparently such an enormous problem on the so-called English Riviera that the Torbay Council created this campaign. The posters will be displayed in local bus shelters. Violators could face a £75 (US$127.75) penalty or prosecution and a fine of up to £1,000 (US$1,703.36).

There’s no shortage of gross ads, particularly online only ones. Earlier this month, Microsoft pulled an online-only ad for Internet Explorer 8. Titled “OMGIG” (or “Oh My God I’m Going To Puke”), the ad pitches the product’s ability to hide users’ browsing history. In the commercial, a wife hops onto her husband’s laptop and finds something highly objectionable, possibly pornography, which causes her to vomit repeatedly.

It’s had about 830,000 views on YouTube, making it possibly the grossest high tech product ad ever.

What do these two ads have in common? They’re so outrageous that they’ve moved beyond their initial audiences and gained worldwide publicity. So even if the buzz is all about the yuck factor, I wouldn’t have known a thing about the massive dog fouling situation in Devon or about the capabilities of Microsoft’s new browser if they hadn’t gone viral.

To read BBC’s article “‘Disgusting’ dog-fouling campaign,” click here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/8046596.stm

Lisa Tibbitts is a corporate communications professional with an MBA in marketing. Follow her on Twitter: http://twitter.com/FinancialPR.

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