A reader from Calgary, Alberta (Ed Lee), got in touch saying:
Paddy, have you done an issue showing how badly it turns out when brands do humour badly?
I haven’t.
I will now.
First off, let’s state our criteria:
The ad should have been intended to be humorous.
The ensuing catastrophe should have been linked in no small part to that ad.
There are many examples of massive PR blunders caused by ads that simply shouldn’t have left the ad agency’s front door — let alone got to the TV networks. Nationwide’s 2015 attempt, Boy (below), was a good example of this. Morever, Nationwide’s press release hilariously claimed that “The sole purpose of this message [in the ad] was to start a conversation, not sell insurance”. This has the distinct sound of someone who finds themselves in a hole, and continues to dig.1
But the prime example of an ad that brought a company down is Just for Feet’s 1998 ad, Kenya. This too was unveiled at the Super Bowl. Here it is:
Now, where to begin?
Most ads in this newsletter I dissect — or like to dissect — but frankly there’s not a lot of need here. There’s the blatant racism, the abduction and drugging, and the re-enaction of slavery and colonialism. Then there’s the curious fact that when the athlete has running shoes on he can’t run that well — suggesting Just for Feet, a sport shoe retailer — is selling, er, pretty rubbish shoes. But I’d imagine most viewers didn’t get past the catastrophe of the hunting, accosting and drugging.
But here’s where the story gets interesting. Just for Feet spent nearly $7 million on airtime, unveiling the ad at the 1998 Super Bowl (being a huge global showcase, this isn’t for the faint-hearted). Media-spend of $7 million is showing a lot of confidence in an ad — but they had every reason to be confident. At the time, in the late 1990s, they had annual sales of $775m and ‘analysts predicted that the chain would soon hit $1 billion in annual sales.’2 In 1998, when this ad aired, Just for Feet was number six in Fortune magazine’s list of America’s Fastest Growing Companies.
Could the company go bust? Not a chance.
From here, though, there’s another twist in the story. In the massive backlash against the ad, Just for Feet admitted the ad was racist, but said it wasn’t their fault. Oh no! It was Saatchi & Saatchi, their ad agency. Just for Feet said in a statement:
“As a direct consequence of Saatchi’s appallingly unacceptable and shockingly unprofessional performance, Just for Feet’s favourable reputation has come under attack, its reputation has suffered, and it has been subjected to the entirely unfounded and unintended public perception that it is a racist or racially insensitive company.”
What happened next? Just for Feet sued Saatchi — it was settled out of court — while the senior management played a game of musical chairs: Harold Ruttenberg, the CEO, ‘resigned’ in September 1999 but his replacement, Helen Rockey, was no better and the company filed for bankruptcy in November 1999. Just for Feet had other difficulties, including inventory problems, but there is little doubt that the ad, and ensuing outrage, hastened the company’s rapid demise.
So is using humour in ads too much trouble that its worth?
Well, no. The Kenya ad is very much an exception: the idiocy of the ad agency produced this calamity of an ad which met with the spinelessness of Just for Feet. In research about humour and advertising, this ad has become somewhat iconic as the go-to example of how not to do humorous advertising, not just because it is so horrendous but, I’d argue, because it’s so rare.3
Put simply, the number of instances where using humour has been a spring-board to commercial and creative success far outweigh such examples.
This wonderful John West ad, for example, helped them to leap-frog the UK competition to be the leader both in value (at 21.8%) and volume (at 19.1%). That’s against category growth of 7.9%4. Plus it was the perfect way of shouting about their sustainability without being po-faced and pious: something a whole lot of brands could learn from.
As I tell my clients: there’s a way to do humorous advertising effectively and safely. Lesson one? Think less about the Kenyan runner and more about a fisherman with a combover.
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Before signing off:
A big thanks for your response to 30x30: Dan, Béatrice, Tiago, James, Kiri, JP, Yoshiko, Tara, Joel, Ben — I look forward to talking to you. To book a free 30-minute chat, to talk about how you can best use humour to help your brand, just pop here.
A couple of keen-eyed readers (Dan, Nick) noticed last week I suggested April had 29 days rather than 30. I must apologise! I shall buy a calendar and/or learn how to count.
Many thanks for reading,
Paddy
www.studiogilmore.com / pg@studiogilmore.com / +44 7866 538 233 / Twitter: @mrpaddygilmore
More on this debacle in this issue of Brands & Humour from September of last year.
Gulas, Charles & Weinberger, Marc: Humor in Advertising, M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, New York, 2006, p. 175. My thanks go to the authors for their detailed account of this episode.
The excellent advertising scholar Fred Beard even notes, “I do hate to keep picking on [Just for Feet],” in his book Humor in the Advertising Business, Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 2008, p. 135.