While driving past our local strip club yesterday, we recalled how lap bands sounds like “lap dance”, and of a similar issue with another current tv ad.
We’re speaking of McDonald’s strange “nuggnuts” campaign.
Before we go on, let’s be clear: we felt that, perhaps, it was only our corrupted minds, living in close proximity to strip clubs and Urban Outfitters, that were making this association. That, perhaps, the phrase we were thinking of wasn’t as ubiquitously a staple of the 80s as we supposed.
In fact, asking around, it seemed like the ad campaign had gone unnoticed. Had anyone else even noticed these nuggnuts ads, or that the phrase “nuggnuts” sounded like an awful lot like numbnuts? Oh yeah, they sure have.
Advertising campaigns like this strike us as what’s bound to happen in a business culture where people are afraid to, or aren’t encouraged to, speak up. Surely, someone at some point must have noticed that the phrase sounded like numbnuts. Were they intimidated, so that they weren’t able to raise objections before the ad went through? The other possibility is that they noticed the similarity, but thought it would make them seem “edgy”, and cause the campaign to “go viral”. It doesn’t. And it won’t.
For a campaign like that to succeed, it has to be for a product that people love, not one that they just use because it happens to be around. For further proof of that last point, see also: this campaign.