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pentyne posted:McDonald's has some pretty hilarious marketing disasters. The Arch Deluxe is ranked as one of the biggest marketing flops ever, and as soon as it launched I remember seeing ads and going "what the gently caress are they trying to sell? adult taste? what does that even mean?" Don't forget the McDLT. Just as the collective consciousness of the USA was waking up to being concerned about the environment, leading up to things like the big Earth Day anniversary in 1990, a whole bunch of mass-marketed "save the planet" crap, and a general opposition to styrofoam packaging, McDonald's comes out with a sandwich box that takes twice as much styrofoam as normal. Starring Jason Alexander: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTSdUOC8Kac Putting aside for the moment the discussion over whether or not styrofoam is environmentally worse than a similar amount paper packaging, the zeigeist was clearly not with them and they pulled it from the market in late 1990.
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# ¿ Jan 12, 2015 18:57 |
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# ¿ May 10, 2024 10:08 |
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# ¿ Feb 2, 2015 20:53 |
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UnoriginalMind posted:I checked the past few pages and didn't see anything about that "Macro Brew" ad that Budweiser put out. The entire thing boiled down to "We're not one of those SNOBBY CRAFT BREWS. We're BREWED HARD and don't taste like peaches." Uh. Okay. It's even dumber, because craft beer isn't what's killing their sales. Cheap wine and liquor used to be horrible, but now they're decent, and that's what people are fleeing macros for. One of the posters over in the beer thread pointed out it's like a commercial for pickup trucks attacking Prius drivers. It was never your market anyway, attacking it doesn't make any sense. They're also buying up local craft brewers, like Elysian, which actually *does* make a peach pumpkin beer like they attack in that ad. The fact that they can *attack their own product* indicates the lack of competition between the two market segments. Lumberjack Bonanza posted:Yeah that ad sucked, but I'm sure it played well with the very real demographic that considers all craft beer to be something for fags and hipsters. Hrm, what about this ad they ran a few months back? Phanatic has a new favorite as of 01:27 on Feb 3, 2015 |
# ¿ Feb 3, 2015 00:32 |
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pentyne posted:You're missing the point. The "millenial" generation has grown up in an era of unprecedented technological advances and the tried and true methods of marketing for the past 60 years are now completely useless. Every generation has grown up in an era of unprecedented technological advances for a few hundred years now.
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# ¿ Feb 3, 2015 17:41 |
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Mister Mind posted:As dumb as they might be, the Truth antismoking campaign does look to be actually sincere and independent of any tobacco companies. Go back a little way farther, and you'll see how cynical it can be when Big Tobacco (Lorillard, in this case) puts together its own "Hey kids, smoking is only for cool grownups!" PSAs. ISIS's antismoking campaign is going to be way more effective: http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-islamic-state-smoking-ban-20150212-story.html quote:Beheadings have become commonplace in the territories held by the militant Islamic State, but the severed head reportedly found last month in the eastern Syrian city of Al-Mayadeen was nevertheless unusual.
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# ¿ Feb 13, 2015 16:35 |
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duckmaster posted:http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides...fEN&language=EN Because it's not a cell phone which is what that article is talking about. And because this doesn't have to enter into law in any EU country until 2016. And because phone makers have until 2017 to change their chargers. But really, because the 3DS *isn't a cell phone*.
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# ¿ Feb 16, 2015 15:51 |
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Y2K wasn't a big deal precisely because people prepared for it and something like half a trillion dollars were spent in efforts to do so. https://clarotesting.wordpress.com/2015/01/12/y2k-why-i-know-it-was-a-real-problem/ ToxicSlurpee posted:Worst thing I heard happen was a few people got summed to jury duty on dates like January 2, 1900. Well, a few unnecessary abortions happened because tests for birth defects came back as false positives. But you know, whatever.
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# ¿ Feb 18, 2015 17:57 |
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Holy poo poo. Lenovo sold computers with malware preinstalled. Not just some random unwanted adware either, but software that actually does a man-in-the-middle attack on the user, installed its own *root CA certificate*, which means that it's breaking into and reading all your SSL traffic. And as an even bigger facepalm, it uses the same root CA cert for each computer, which means that anyone else who sniffs your SSL traffic can also read it now. So, you know, don't use wifi to check your bank account or anything like that. http://marcrogers.org/2015/02/19/lenovo-installs-adware-on-customer-laptops-and-compromises-all-ssl/ http://blog.erratasec.com/2015/02/some-notes-on-superfish.html#.VOX1kfnF9pl But don't worry. To keep the ssl key secure, they stored it upside down: https://twitter.com/supersat/status/568329299494744065 This is worse in magnitude of gently caress-the-customer contempt than the Sony rootkit debacle was, although it's probably not as widespread.
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# ¿ Feb 19, 2015 15:47 |
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That didn't take long. http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/02/lenovo-pcs-ship-with-man-in-the-middle-adware-that-breaks-https-connections/ quote:[Update: Rob Graham, CEO of security firm Errata Security, has cracked the cryptographic key encrypting the Superfish certificate. That means anyone can now use the private key to launch man-in-the-middle HTTPS attacks that won't be detected by machines that have the certificate installed. It took Graham just three hours to figure out that the password was "komodia" (minus the quotes). He told Ars the certificate works against Google even when an end-user is using Chrome. That confirms earlier statements that certificate pinning in the browser is not a defense against this attack (more about that below). Graham has a detailed explanation how he did it here.] Lenovo's response should be an example to companies of how *not* to respond to a PR debacle: http://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1929 quote:We have thoroughly investigated this technology and do not find any evidence to substantiate security concerns. But we know that users reacted to this issue with concern, and so we have taken direct action to stop shipping any products with this software. We will continue to review what we do and how we do it in order to ensure we put our user needs, experience and priorities first.
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# ¿ Feb 19, 2015 20:06 |
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joshtothemaxx posted:
"You'll never walk alone" sounds like a really inappropriate slogan to associate with a disaster caused by thousands of people trying to walk into the stadium together. It's like identifying "Fly the friendly skies" with 9/11.
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# ¿ Feb 26, 2015 15:53 |
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JacquelineDempsey posted:Wow, dumb move in marketing is an understatement here. My favorite Twitter comment so far: Best one I've seen is "I don't have time to explain 400 years of oppression to you and still make my train." Article about the hands-on experience thus far: http://www.fastcocreate.com/3043852/this-is-what-happens-when-you-walk-into-starbucks-and-talk-to-the-barista-about-race quote:When I make my final coffee order, from another barista who is black, I have the following exchange:
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# ¿ Mar 18, 2015 22:44 |
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# ¿ Mar 27, 2015 17:04 |
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pentyne posted:The poo poo with the Germanwings crash is completely unprecedented in the history of aviation It's actually not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAM_Mozambique_Airlines_Flight_470 quote:On 21 December 2013, the Mozambican Civil Aviation Institute (Instituto Moçambicano de Aviação Civil, IACM) head João Abreu presented the preliminary investigation report, according to which Captain Herminio dos Santos Fernandes had a "clear intention" to crash the jet and manually changed its autopilot settings.[14] The plane's intended altitude was reportedly changed three times from 38,000 feet (11,582 m) to 592 feet (180 m), the latter being below ground level, and the speed was manually adjusted as well.[15] The cockpit voice recorder captured several alarms going off during the descent, as well as repeated loud bangs on the door from the co-pilot, who was locked out of the cockpit until shortly before the crash.[2][16] Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SilkAir_Flight_185 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990
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# ¿ Mar 27, 2015 19:50 |
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pentyne posted:Depressingly, none of them were "white" people, which is what gets the headlines. Pretty sure EgyptAir 990 was a headliner when it went down. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/01/us/crash-egyptair-990-overview-egyptian-jet-carrying-217-plunges-into-atlantic.html It's also kind of funny how you were unaware of those other crashed until just now, but it's everybody *else* that's racist for paying attention to the current disaster.
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# ¿ Mar 27, 2015 19:59 |
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USPS releases a stamp featuring Maya Angelou and a quote attributed to Maya Angelou. Except the quote's from an author of children's books who is distinctly not Maya Angelou. http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifes...fa9a_story.html
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# ¿ Apr 8, 2015 18:10 |
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Came for the PYF, got DND. Dumb marketing: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/11/12/ddos-marketing-stunt/ quote:The owner of a web host tried to promote his anti-DDoS kit and highlight vulnerabilities by launching two brief DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks against the Hong Kong stock exchange, but he instead wound up convicted and sentenced to nine months in jail.
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# ¿ Apr 13, 2015 17:21 |
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Yvonmukluk posted:I though I'd share some vintage dumb marketing ideas from the Great War days. Dumb Great War marketing ideas from today: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-32313043 quote:The supermarket giant Woolworths has taken down an online Anzac Day campaign in Australia after it attracted strong criticism on social media.
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# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 14:56 |
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Platystemon posted:Taking the fun out of funeral. Mourning wood.
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# ¿ Apr 24, 2015 23:18 |
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Smith & Wesson makes a line of handguns called the M&P. This is not how to advertise that:
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# ¿ May 19, 2015 03:30 |
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The White Dragon posted:
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# ¿ May 19, 2015 16:52 |
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Blue Footed Booby posted:This sounds like bullshit, and Google is turning up tons of sites calling it bullshit but none that even claim there to be a source. 'snopes mcdonalds third pound' has this as the first link: http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=90037 which has a link to: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/07/great-third-pound-burger-ripoff where the head of A&W at the time is quoted: quote:UPDATE: Elizabeth Green tweets that her source for this anecdote is Threshold Resistance by Alfred Taubman, who owned A&W in the 80s. Here's the relevant passage, after Taubman has called in Yankelovich, Skelly and White to figure out what was wrong with their burger: Granted, he might be full of poo poo, but at least he's a source.
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# ¿ May 19, 2015 23:50 |
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"They already make a drink like that: Soylent Cola." "Oh? How's it taste?" "It varies from person to person."
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# ¿ May 27, 2015 23:45 |
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sassassin posted:The way in which the licence fee is collected is archaic and out of line with every other public service, and the money should be exclusively used for news, educational, cultural and regional programming that could not be adequately funded any other way (plus producing those shows that return a profit due to sales in the global market). If the show returns a profit on its own why should license fees be used to pay for it? Top Gear was an enormous money-maker for the BBC, the notion that some pensioner needs to cough up $225 a year to pay his share of the production fees for an enormously popular show about enormously expensive cars for enormously wealthy people is silly.
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# ¿ Jun 1, 2015 14:22 |
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death .cab for qt posted:I'm glad that McDonald's did their careful millenial marketing research. Now all my friends and I drive the extra block to Taco Bell or Burger King to buy things for a dollar instead of a buck fifty. The reason the dollar menu is going away is that poo poo gets more expensive with time. Ground beef is more expensive than it used to be, the ingredients for the cheese are more expensive than it used to be, etc. Either you keep a dollar menu and watch it shrink as the things that used to be profitable to sell for a dollar become more expensive (Like, the double cheeseburger used to be on the dollar menu, but they replaced it with the McDouble, which is the same thing but with one slice of cheese instead of two), or you abandon the pleasing marketing hook of the dollar menu and go to a $1.50 menu, or whatever. It's got nothing to do with the loving millenials, it's got to do with inflation: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/10/why-mcdonalds-killed-the-dollar-menu-in-1-chart/280778/
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# ¿ Jun 1, 2015 17:13 |
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Privatization does generally seem to be a good way to generate good television shows.
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# ¿ Jun 1, 2015 19:46 |
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The White Dragon posted:Privatization also gave us ABC's insanely racist sitcom lineup. I'm not even sure how Black Attack and Those Kooky Gooks got greenlit, but privatized production has proven time and time again that bad ideas aren't the sole property of publicly-funded TV. I didn't say that "privitization can't produce utter crap," and TV programming definitely follows Sturgeon's Law. There are entire channels that somehow manage to persist without for years having seemingly a single program worth watching (TLC in particular seems to be a bottomless cesspool of reality shovelware). But, during a point in time where there's an unprecedented number of seriously loving excellent shows in pretty much any genre you'd care to name, the notion that public funding for broadcasting is necessary to produce good television is somewhat tone-deaf. There are plenty of lovely movies being made, too, but nobody's clamoring that we should charge people license fees so a government agency can turn out some feature films.
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# ¿ Jun 1, 2015 23:06 |
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Kugyou no Tenshi posted:Possibly one of the worst examples you could have picked - TLC was originally a publicly-funded channel that was then a non-profit independent private channel, then started sliding down into poo poo almost immediately after it got bought by Discovery Communications. TLC was privatized in *1980*, prior to which it was called the Appalachian Community Service Network and was viewed by approximately nobody. You're absolutely right that Discovery Communications wound up breaking all its legs but hasn't had the heart to just drag it behind the barn and shoot it, but any good programming that anyone remembers being shown on it was when it was a privately-run channel.
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# ¿ Jun 1, 2015 23:38 |
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Good advertising entails not making the viewer's eyes bleed. So whoever designed that web page would suck at it.
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# ¿ Jun 2, 2015 21:07 |
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Cage posted:I hate to continue the derail but I have nowhere else to post this tidbit of information. I work at a college and here are good names Ive seen: My twin daughters, Monique and Unique. 5 dollars a shoe, that's 4 shoes.
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# ¿ Jun 18, 2015 22:48 |
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FIFA's awfully-titled hagiography has been pulled from US theaters after making $918.00 in its opening weekend. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/18/fifas-united-passions-lowest-grossing-film-us-history The film cost $25 million. quote:The film has done marginally better in Russia, the Blatter-approved beneficiary of the upcoming 2018 World Cup, where it has scored $158,000. It has not been picked up for distribution in football-loving countries such as the UK, Germany and Brazil and went straight to DVD in France. Here's a review: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/04/united-passions-review-tim-roth-sam-neill-gerard-depardieu quote:So where did Fifa’s money go ? Considering that the film United Passions was principally bankrolled by the now-shamed sports organisation, it isn’t unfair to say some of the dough must have ended up in the pockets of Tim Roth, Gérard Depardieu, Sam Neill and Fischer Stevens.
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# ¿ Jun 19, 2015 14:56 |
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Grey Fox posted:FWIW, Tim Roth flat-out admitted that he did it to get out of a "financial hole" and said that his father is probably spinning in his grave over the whole thing. Reminds me of Michael Caine talking about Jaws 4: ""I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it was terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific." But lord, even that film *made money*.
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# ¿ Jun 19, 2015 16:30 |
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http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...e-10327313.html A while back Heinz ran a promotion with QR codes on their bottles which would take you to a site where you can design your own ketchup label. Ketchup has a long shelf life so plenty of those bottles are still out there, but Heinz let the domain lapse and it's now a porn site. So some poor German was inadvertently exposed to porn. After he complained, Heinz apologized. And the porn site offered him a free subscription.
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# ¿ Jun 19, 2015 18:37 |
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# ¿ Jun 24, 2015 18:28 |
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# ¿ Jun 25, 2015 15:45 |
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Apple has started pulling games from the app store which depict the Confederate flag. Including Civil War-era wargames. http://toucharcade.com/2015/06/25/apple-removes-confederate-flag/ quote:It's looking like Apple has pulled everything from the App Store that features a Confederate flag, regardless of context. The reasoning Apple is sending developers is "...because it includes images of the confederate flag used in offensive and mean-spirited ways." Look how mean-spirited and offensive this is: Waiting for them to pull _Gettysburg_, _Glory_, _Gone With The Wind_, and _Shenandoah_ from the iTunes movie store.
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# ¿ Jun 25, 2015 18:24 |
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Commas are important: http://screamer.deadspin.com/banner-urges-englands-world-cup-fans-to-come-on-their-g-1713712446
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# ¿ Jun 25, 2015 20:00 |
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OniPanda posted:The confederate battle flag (the one they're using) is the stars and bars. No, it's not. The stars-and-bars is the first national flag of the Confederacy, not any of Confederate battle flags.
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# ¿ Jun 30, 2015 15:43 |
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Hey, remember Jared, the former hambeast who Subway still throws into an occasional ad? http://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-raids-home-of-subway-diet-spokesman-jared-fogle-2015-7
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# ¿ Jul 7, 2015 14:52 |
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Zaphod42 posted:Was that Bunny from The Wire? Dude must be having trouble finding work Life imitates art.
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# ¿ Jul 11, 2015 02:46 |
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# ¿ May 10, 2024 10:08 |
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mcbexx posted:Oh, you went and updated your logo on your company's 80th anniversary? "No way, why should I change? He's the one who sucks."
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# ¿ Jul 13, 2015 21:21 |