February 5th, 2008
SalesGenie Super Bowl Ads Get Eyeballs — For the Wrong Reasons?
As of this writing, the SalesGenie Super Bowl ads are getting tens of thousands of page views on YouTube, but not because of the offer (100 free sales leads).
Rather, people think the ads are racist.
When I first viewed them last night while watching the Super Bowl, I didn’t immediately see racism — because the marketer in me saw the offer and the easy-to-remember URL.
According to Jeff Porcovici at Portfolio.com, SalesGenie’s CEO writes the ads himself and purposely makes them “bad” to attract attention.
If a questionable ad gets “eyeballs” and “buzz,” does it serve its purpose?
You can watch the Panda one yourself.
February 7th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Hi Dianna,
I agree 100% with you — I did NOT see the ad as racist, though given the character accents and various “cultural” visual cues in the video, I can see why some people would think so.
I too tuned into the marketing aspect of the video. The use of humor (if done correctly, of course) can go a long way to making ad memorable. Plus, it does make a pretty good offer in the call to action.
Bottom line: How many people now associate “SalesGenie.com” with LingLing the panda? Probably quite a few!
Also, since one of my sites is an updated collection of funny video clips, this type of commercial resonated with my “funny bone”. I’m always on the lookout for humorous treatments of any topic in video!
Overall, I liked the piece… and to think: SaleGenie paid, what, $2.9 million for it (the going rate for 30 second spots)? Whew!
Thank for a great blog, by the way!
Dave
February 8th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Dave, Love your video clip blog! That’s a good idea, actually. One of my clients wants to do video. I spend hours in YouTube looking at video. I could use Tumblr (which Kyle posted about in another thread) to keep track of things.