Another marketing #epicfail

I really do wonder sometimes if large corpoartions, especially the marketing departments, ever do a reality/sanity check on their projects.

A conversation with a friend reminded me of this one recently. GoDaday attempted to satirise one of Budweiser's famous Clydesdale advert for the 2015 Super Bowl adverts. As a satire, it was quite accurate and they released it the day before Budweiser. So what's to go wrong?

Simply put - the subject matter. Budweiser had a cute puppy and a storyline about finding your way home in adversity and the advantages of having friends who weigh nearly a ton "having your back". GoDaddy had a storyline about a puppy getting lost and finding it's way home only to be sold online. Cue massive moral outrage from animal lovers everywhere, advert being pulled and not shown at the Super Bowl and the CEO had to apologise on the company blog. Not a good result.

So, seriously, did no one in GoDaddy look at this and go "Ummm - I can see a downside to this one, guys"?

If they done an advert about a puppy being lost, the advantages of being able to get a website up quickly and integrates strongly with social media that results in the puppy bing found quickly - that would have been a winner.

Budweiser "Lost Puppy" Super Bowl Advert 2015

GoDaddy "Journey Home" Super Bowl Advert 2015

If you want to see both adverts and a more detailed breakdown on how close the adverts were to each other, there's a great article here by Alison Griswold. If you haven't seen the adverts in question they are both well worth a look, though for different reasons :-)