- Coke: “Make it Happy”
Today’s buzz word is BULLYING. Everywhere you turn bullying, bullying, bullying. It is a societal epidemic. Schools are riddled with children who are afraid to be themselves and Coke all of a sudden has a solution? Nope, not going to happen. Don’t put any onus on the bully, just drink coke and life is great! This had a chance to do something good.. .but instead it was just empty promises from a company who gives kids cavities and diabetes, not ways to deal with bullying.
- Nissan: “With Dad”
First of all, this wasn’t even a commercial; it was a full length feature film. Premise of a son torn between happiness for his successful dad and resentment for his absent father? Again… we might have something here… I thought the dad might die in a crash or something and the son would think about the time he missed out on with his dad especially with “Cats in the Cradle” playing in the background. I was invested in this one… I thought this one had it all. All that was missing here was Jack telling Rose farewell in the frozen Atlantic. But then the ad ends with the dad picking up the son in a Nissan… that’s it? I feel like this ad did the reverse of what it was trying to do… selfish dad comes around only when it’s convenient to him. There was definitely some hidden propaganda in this one, I’m just not sure what it was.
- Nationwide: “Make Safe Happen”
Just throwing death in our faces during the Super Bowl? If there was ever a perfect time for Ron Burgundy’s quote “Well that escalated quickly” this was it! I get the premise of the ad… yet… not sure the message was delivered appropriately, and definitely wasn’t delivered in the right setting. There are better avenues to educate parents on keeping their children safe and Nationwide decides to use the Super Bowl which is a time away from reality for so many people. The Super Bowl? The FREAKING SUPER BOWL? You chose the Super Bowl to kill a child? If I wasn’t already freaked out enough about my son starting to crawl… you literally killed a little boy in front of our eyes! Nationwide says they created this ad to get everyone “talking.” Well you did just that… we’re talking about how much we hate you Nationwide. If this commercial makes you want to buy Nationwide insurance, then I literally loathe you more than this commercial itself.
Sorry Son: Chronicles of a New Dad 
The Nissan commercial got me as well. Damn you Cat Stevens! Pretty anticlimactic ending for sure.
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Grateful post. Of only these ads reflected reality then maybe they’d be more appealing!
If drinking coke actually had these feel good happy then maybe it would be a great anti bullying message. Sadly though I agree with you here. They missed their main point which is a shame especially from a parents stance.
The Nissan ad clearly, like the coke ad, missed ad trick here. If after watching an advert that you are actually wishing that the dad died then clearly the ad didn’t do the job intended.
What I don’t understand is that these ads are tried and tested to an audience market. Why weren’t these points picked up on? Or is the market now a room of lab monkeys chain smoking?
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Some truly awful ads there, that’s the first I have watched them, I think the people who proof watch these were maybe the guys with headphones in the coke ad, maybe had a coke or two too many! What a waste of their advertising budgets..
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I thought your points were right on! Unfortunately if people are negatively talking about a company–they are still talking about them. And that just grows name recognition. People & companies have leveraged “negative talk” for a long time. Nationwide went for shock value, and they got it. I don’t know if it’ll get them more customers but it got them a week in the spotlight.
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