WTF? What d’you suppose they were smoking when they came up with this lulu?

This Acer ad manages to tick all the boxes. Unreadable. Irrelevant. Incompetent. And frankly just a teeny bit bananas


Imagine you’re given the task of launching a new product.

The market is bitterly competitive. Computers. Dog eat dog. Squillions of cash are to be spent. But you have a good product.

What’s the obvious solution? Should you explain why your computer is better? Should you ask people to buy it?

No.

Get Keifer Sutherland, who is “known for speed, intensity and a fair number of explosions”. And say this machine is “all he needs to explore his baking passion”.

Keifer Sutherland? He’s an expert on computers? Will all the computers explode?Or just a fair number of them?

Er, yes, well. Keifer Sutherland. Holding a cupcake in one hand, because .. Well, because .. well, why not?

What a shame that newspaper printing makes the cupcake look like somebody’s brain, just extracted from their cranium, and you can’t read the copy because it’s white out of light green.

Actually, it’s not a shame. It’s a blessing, because it is impossible to discover what on earth Mr. Sutherland has to do with computers. But it says he likes baking. And he has “a sweet cupcake fluffy side.”

So that’s alright, then.

I hope he got well paid.

I hope someone gets fired.

But they’ll probably win an award. Right?

 

 

 

 

About the Author

In 2003, the Chartered Institute of Marketing named Drayton one of 50 living individuals who have shaped today’s marketing.

He has worked in 55 countries with many of the world’s greatest brands. These include American Express, Audi, Bentley, British Airways, Cisco, Columbia Business School, Deutsche Post, Ford, IBM, McKinsey, Mercedes, Microsoft, Nestle, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, Unilever, Visa and Volkswagen.

Drayton has helped sell everything from Airbus planes to Peppa Pig. His book, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, out in 17 languages, has been the UK’s best seller on the subject every year since 1982. He has also run his own businesses in the U.K., Portugal and Malaysia.

He was a main board member of the Ogilvy Group, a founding member of the Superbrands Organisation, one of the first eight Honorary Fellows of the Institute of Direct Marketing and one of the first three people named to the Hall of Fame of the Direct Marketing Association of India. He has also been given Lifetime Achievement Awards by the Caples Organisation in New York and Early To Rise in Florida.

5 Comments

  1. Steve Hunt

    I thought the exact same thing when I saw the TV advert.

    What a waste

    Reply
  2. Charalampos

    HA HA HA HA HA! ROCKS!

    Reply
  3. Mike edwards

    Drayton, you don’t have the complete picture. Below is the confidential product design brief for the product:

    PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT BRIEF

    Target Audience
    – Ageing Action heroes with bipolar “fluffy cupcake side”

    Design considerations
    – Must withstand a “fair number” of explosions, be marginally heavier than a single giant cupcake and facilitate the user’s “baking passion”.
    – Part of an appliance-set to include matching egg beater and convection oven.

    When you have the complete picture the logic behind the creative is ‘revealed’.

    Reply
  4. Al Henderson

    Okay, well … I’m seeing this for the first time, just now (Nov. 2013)…

    And I am utterly flabbergasted!

    I wonder how much this “copywriter” (can I even use that word in this context without feeling dirty?) got paid for this. Not to mention the folks all the way up the line who — INSTEAD of a check — should have been given their walking papers for such an insult to the trade, and what undoubtedly cost Asus a poop-load of sales and respect.

    Yuck!

    Reply
  5. Stephen Newdell

    TOTAL INSANITY and I’m always amazed, really, daily! at how many insane people are making big money cheating other people. I said before and maintain, Drayton is the most honest man in this business and that’s one of the BIG reasons he is so popular. “Live forever O King.” If you ever die, we’re all in eternal marketing trouble. sn

    Reply

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