Monday, April 7, 2014

The Worst Promotion Ever. Of All Time.

Every now and again, a company tries to promote something.  Maybe it's a new dish at a restaurant (perhaps one so manly women simply can't handle it), or a sweepstakes, or simply an attempt to raise awareness of an issue.  Sometimes the advertisements are incredibly effective, sometimes they just seem to be rushed out, and sometimes you wonder what the hell they were thinking.

For instance, just recently Chili's was going to do a promotion for autism awareness by raising funds for the National Autism Association.  Sounds good, right?  Well, they didn't realize that right on the company's website is a statement declaring that vaccinations cause autism.  When the CDC contacts you asking to reconsider, it's probably time to think that maybe you screwed up.

To their credit, Chili's dropped the promotion.

Now, there are worse promotions...and now we're going to look at the worst I've ever seen.

Ever.  For all time.


If you have a strong stomach, go ahead and click the following video clip.


"You know what this needs?  A bit of pressure to make people understand how important this is."

"Got it.  Right off the bat we'll have a teacher murder two kids who don't go along with the plan."

"...That's not what I said.  We want this to be clear that everybody needs to do their part."

"Okay, okay, I understand.  We'll have a boss murder some employees, too."

"What?  I- that- no!  We just want people to understand that unless everybody does their part we're all in danger."

"So...we'll also kill some celebrities and have it be that they explode in a shower of blood instead of just die."

"Perfect."

Not pictured: Good taste.
At no point did anybody think this might be a bad idea.  The actors, directors, producers, camera crew, sound guys, editors, effects crew, and the people paying for the ad all looked at this and went "yeah, that seems right."

It took the 10:10 organization a very short amount of time to have their sponsors and collaborators start withdrawing support and abandoning ship faster than the protagonist of a Final Destination movie trying to get off a doomed ship a-

Wait, there hasn't been a boat-based Final Destination movie yet?  Oh come on, they had one involve a roller coaster, but not a ship?

Fine, one of the novels did, but that doesn't count.

Where was I?

Oh, right.

You'd expect this kind of ad from... You know, I'm not sure who you'd expect this kind of ad from.  Your typical super villain has enough sense to imply the mass slaughtering of everybody who disobeys, unless they're completely insane like the Joker.  Did anybody check to see if Ra's Al Ghul was the head of this organization?  Or the Red Skull?

"Wait, did nobody get any chunks of child in their mouth?  Okay, clean it up and set it up again."
I think my favorite part was the fact that the organization did pull the ad, but only after they went on the record as saying other people "didn't get it."

Obviously we didn't, or we wouldn't react as we did.

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