Bending the Mind with Weirdvertising

Chris Kocek’s article “The Big Idea is Broken. Welcome To Weirdvertising ” floats the idea that the Big Idea in advertising has been displaced by bizarre and surreal modes of weirdvertising.

The article's title makes it seem as though weirdness in advertising were a new phenomenon. But this is hardly the case. The death knell for the Big Idea was sounded years ago, and weirdness in advertising, which is also known as oddvertising, took off in the early 2000s.

Some of the first wave of oddvertisements can be seen in Watchmojo's list of the Top 10 Weirdest Commercials of the 2000s, which includes the "Dude, You're Getting a Dell " ad that appeared in 2001 and the Lays "Dentures " ad that appeared in the 2004 Super Bowl.

As weirdness continued to seep into Super Bowl ads, the topic was discussed in a February 2006 NPR podcast entitled “The Super Bowl and the Rise of 'Oddvertising.' “ In this podcast, author Warren Berger cites Burger King’s “The King ” campaign as a prime examples of oddvertising.

A Home for the Weirdvertising Community

The concept of weirdvertising was treated in a forum that was hosted in LiveJournal in 2008. The thread was run by a LiveJournal member named ohshitman who described the forum as a community that was devoted to ads “with an emphasis on newer ads and the really really bizarre or nonsensical.”

The forum included a YouTube video about Henderson Castration Tools that was later removed for violating YouTube’s terms of service (it's back). The video was described as “Much much much much MUCH more than you probably ever wanted to know about horse castration.”

Although vividly depicting horse castration might be stark and unsettling, this ad is a different animal than the cartoonish and offbeat ads that characterize most of what is considered weirdvertising.

The Abnormal Becomes the Norm

As oddvertising became increasingly pervasive, a September 2011 article in Mole Empire entitled “10 Freaky Pieces of Oddvertising ” provided international examples of strange ads that ran in 2010. Author Bia tells us that 2010 was “a very fruitful year for?weird pieces?of advertising throughout the world.” Shock and surprise, she says, “are both very powerful tools to use in?advertising campaigns.”

In 2014, the Make Happy agency in the UK published a blog that welcomed weirdvertising as an antidote to advertising in England that had become banal and repetitive.?

With oddvertising becoming the new norm, Mike Johnson described how oddvertising had become imperative for advertisers in an October 2016 article entitled “And Then Advertising Got Weird: What Is Oddvertising? ”

As marketers strive for more traffic and buzz on the Internet, says Johnson, “contemporary Oddvertising has become so strange that if you’re not dabbling with some form of weirdness in your advertising — or, heaven forbid, get caught ‘selling’ in a commercial — your efforts are going to be little more than white noise.” ?

In a 2016 article entitled “What is ‘oddvertising’ and how can your brand use it? ” Felix Morgan describes oddvertising as “advertising on drugs” and urges marketers to “try harnessing the weird for your next campaign and see what it does for you.”

Strange Brew

Strangeness, edginess, oddball humor, and surprise are key ingredients of oddvertising. We can add creepiness to the list as embodied in the Playstation 3 "Baby " ad that features a supernatural toy baby, sinister laughter, and a black monolith in a setting that resembles a scene from Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Oddysey." Says one commenter, "I remember watching this commercial when I was younger and I had to hide under my blanket every time it came on."

Another baby ad that many viewers found tasteless and offensive was the 2002 Xbox "Champagne / Life Is Short " ad that was banned from TV. The ad, which features a baby being born and aging rapidly after being rocketed through a window, also resembles the aging astronaut scene in "2001: A Space Oddysey."

Microsoft created another controversial Xbox ad called "Standoff " that never aired. The ad shows a crowd in a train station shooting one another with imaginary finger guns like a scene in a John Wick movie.

An ad that is akin to the brainwashing scene in Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" is the Sprite Lymon "Spa " ad. The ad uses quick subliminal edits to demonstrate “Sublymonal Advertising” as the narrator tells us, "Don't worry, it will only affect your brain."

In a September 2021 article entitled “Against the Odds? Standing out with Oddvertising ,” James Redmond Chua notes that “An oddvert deviates from the classic approach of setup and punchline with bizarre variations, surreal incongruities, and outlandish nonsense.”?

Ryan Chute in a March 2022 article entitled “Weird Ads: The Philosophy Behind Odd-vertising ” notes that “Odd-vertising is a term used to describe advertising that is strange or unexpected.” He adds that, “Some people might find odd-advertising entertaining or amusing, while others may find it confusing or simply not effective.”?

Some oddvertisements feature antisocial and darkly humorous behavior, a prime example being the Emerald Nuts ad in which Robert Goulet appears as a mischievous gremlin who wreaks mayhem on a company's office workers. We see a similar theme in Allstate Insurance ads in which a Mayhem man gleefully triggers an array of accidents.

Insurance ads in general have become quirky comedy skits. Like mini-sitcoms, the ads feature a recurring cast of comical characters such as Progressive Insurance’s Flo and Jamy , and Liberty Mutual’s LiMu Emu & Doug . Geico has aired more than 60 weirdevertisements featuring the Geico Gecko, the cave man, Maxwell the pig, owls, penguins, a sea monster, manatees, a walrus, the "Everybody knows that" series, the "how it makes me feel" series, a talking pothole, and a wide assortment of other oddball skits.

Orbit gum ran a series of off-color "dirty mouth" oddvertisements that featured foul language, unsightly visuals , skeevy behavior , unsavory food characters , and riske themes .

After the LG Electronics "So Real It's Scary " ad went viral by depicting an elevator prank, the LG Chile group produced an "Ultra Reality " ad in which job interviewees looking out of an office window are fooled into believing a meteor has struck the city.

Weirdness as an Art Form

As the interest in assembling and critiquing collections of weird ads shows, weirdvertising has become an art form. With a two-decades-old history, weirdvertisement has become a category that evokes sentimental responses in viewers of past ads.

Pundits writing about weirdvertising tend to cite classic examples such as Squatty Potty’s “Unicorn Poop ,” KFC’s “Fun in the Sun ,” Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like ,” and Mountain Dew’s “Freak Chain ” and “Puppy Monkey Baby ” ads. ?

Of course, not every oddvertisement succeeds. Burger King’s “The King” is generally considered a failed oddvertisement, as is the Quiznos Spongmonkeys campaign. The Spongmonkeys ads continue to generate interest and have spawned a rash of critics and historians that includes Devnul , doplex , Media Mementos , Business Tales , and Modern Business .

Mike Johnson relates how the Burger King ad was retired in 2011 because of soft sales. “The King garnered headlines for being strange,” says Johnson, “but was often described by the media and on the web as creepy — not very flattering for a company mascot.”

Can bad ads be successful? Although Jim Yoakum classifies Microsoft’s “Oh My God I’m Gonna Puke ” as “badvertising,” he also notes that “the ad went viral.”

Super Bowl Ad Mania

The Super Bowl has become a launch pad for an annual crop of weirdvertisements that are treated like major movie debuts. The unveiling of Super Bowl ads has become a highly anticipated event, with the ads being rated and ranked according to their weirdness factor and entertainment value.

The buzz that is generated by Super Bowl ads can be seen in the current issue of AdAge.com , which is full of Super Bowl advertising news and speculation. The Hollywood Reporter reports that the Super Bowl ads are sold out, with a 30-second spot costing $7 million.

Can B2B Be Weird?

In a 2016 entitled “The Good and Bad in B2B Marketing ,” Doug Fowler of the Lynn Daniel Group discusses weirdvertising as a puzzling but promising new direction for B2B technology marketing. Fowler begins by telling us he was “stunned by a terrible commercial” that he could not understand, which led him to ponder the good or bad in ad campaigns.

Fowler lists B2B technology commercials he considers successful and unsuccessful. On the positive side are Caterpillar’s “Built For It Trials ” campaign and Lenovo’s “Users Happen ” campaign. On the negative side are Microsoft’s “Oh My God I’m Gonna Puke ” ad and IBM’s “Hack a Hair Dryer ” campaign.

B2B Weirdness: My Take

Is there an opportunity for B2B marketers to stand out through weirdvertising? Like all marketers, B2B marketers seek to generate excitement around their products and services. Although we do see some geeky humor and dramatic posturing seeping into B2B marketing, for the most part B2B marketing focuses on product features and customer benefits in a fairly staid and straightforward manner.

Other than IBM's and Microsoft's aborted weirdvertisements, the most shocking thing we see in B2B technology marketing is a tendency towards exaggerated claims. (Microsoft did release a controversial ad featuring spirit cooking artist Marina Abramovic in 2020 that also was pulled from the market.)

There is a spectrum of weirdness in weirdvertising, with the most extreme forms being disturbing and stupifying. I don't think B2B marketers will go in very far in that direction. We might see a mild form of weirdvertising in B2B marketing, but nothing hard core.