Contest Time! Show Us Examples Of Marketing Gone Bad


Clearly, this ad works as I see it on 22 percent of all sites I visit. Still, I'd like to enter it as evidence and protest those who click on it.

You don’t always hit a home run in the game of marketing.

But sometimes, I see ads, promotions or emails so horribly concepted and executed that I wonder why good money funded that bad idea. From the painful auto dealership billboard declaring, “This is what Al Gore designed the internet for” (huh?) to the email urging me to “Share your favorite brand story” (the brand was an airline — really, you want to hear it?), some things make us go, “Hmm.”

We know you see things, ridiculous things, and the vitriol builds, the heart burn flares. We’d like to offer a way to vent your spleen. Release your anxiety.

Thus we introduce the Fast Horse Competition of July 2011: Marketing Gone Bad.

Contest: Share horrific marketing examples that burn your cornea and kill your will to click, think, and breathe. Don’t send us the ones that you ponder and think “hmm, they could have done a better job attracting the 18-24 age group.” Send us the ones that cause your random friend to exhale in disgust. We want those.

How to Enter: Take a quick camera pic or screengrab and tweet us the link (@Fast_Horse with the #MarketingGoneBad hashtag). You have until July 27 to complete this task.

How to Win: Dig low. Review all of your recent emails that went directly to the spam folder. Read billboards as you speed along the highway. Ponder the infomercial. We’ll create a Hall of Shame based on the best entries and choose the winner from this group.

The Magnificent Prize: If I told you, well, wow. (Fine, we haven’t picked one yet. But let me assure you that it’ll be appropriate for all ages, genders, households — I’m thinking movie tickets to the Landmark Theater, gift card to a coffee shop OR a puppy.)