Bad Advertising Effects

Image of a signpost pointing off a cliff, indicating bad advertising effects

Businesses and marketing firms understand that bad advertising effects can destroy market share. The goal of advertising is obvious. It should heighten engagement, increase online / in-store traffic, improve profits, increase brand recognition and increase market share. However, advertising campaigns can miss the mark and instead lead to a decline in sales numbers.

When designing an advertising campaign strategy for your business, it’s important to look at what type of traffic you want to generate. This can be for either your website or place of business. In addition, how your organization is going to measure the impact of your marketing strategy is essential to your success. Learning to target exact demographics and how they behave is one of the most crucial elements when designing a strategy.  Not doing so can lead to bad advertising and a wasted portion of your advertising budget.

Bad advertising can alienate a portion of your current and future potential customer base. According to Ad Week publication, more than ⅓ of all Americans will refuse to purchase a brand because of previous bad advertising campaigns even if the ad was changed or removed from all media outlets.

Bad advertising effects will ruin your brand image

A form of bad advertising effect is “False Advertising”. This is when a business uses a baseless, misleading, or dishonest content to market or promote products/services.  No marketing team is perfect and mistakes can occur, but when paired with deliberate ignorance and possible intent to appear clever in the eyes of the public, the result is false advertising.  Some advertisements miss the point by misleading their audience and in turn leaving a sour taste in the mouths of consumers. Over time, negative ads can lead to biases about brands by everyday people.

Consumers will choose which products to steer away from, and typically this consumer behavior is due to the association with a negative brand image campaign. Sales will immediately suffer and it will take large amounts of resources to draw those customers back into your reach.  

The PR nightmare ad for Dove:

One example of bad advertisement can be directly linked to the Dove company with the ad they released back in October of 2017 on its Facebook page. The ad featured a black woman removing her shirt, which was similar to her skin tone. Only to then reveal that she morphed into a white woman, who was also wearing a shirt just like her skin tone.  The Dove ad, in essence, focused on how its soap can clean a “dirty” black person into whiteness. Social and national media focused on the racist overtones of the ad after the post went viral for all the wrong reasons.

After a lot of negative feedback from consumers, the Dove company removed the ad and apologized. They said “In an image, we posted this week, we missed the mark in thoughtfully representing women of color and we deeply regret the offense that it has caused.”

All in all, bad advertising campaigns can do more harm than good for your brand. Agencies out there that claim that their cookie cutter approach is effective, can miss the mark and produce bad advertisements. Amped on the other hand will effectively produce a high-quality well-developed ad.  We take a uniquely psychological approach to engage your potential consumers in a positive way. We also work with you on how to aggressively increase your market share and brand image.

Contact us today @ 520-777-8309 for your complimentary consultation!