I’m starting a new series called Bad Ads, where I point out advertising techniques and individual campaigns that wind up being is a dismal failure.
HP and this movie called Jumper, have teamed up for what I call a dual-ad. Basically, the ad spot starts off with promoting the movie, and then 15 seconds into the ad, one of the characters picks up a wireless keyboard. The ad then morphs into an advertisement for HP, using Serena Williams and the typical modern HP ad spot. Of course, the idiot from the movie is popping in and out of the ad non-stop. The ad ends with warping back into an ad for the movie.
The idea behind dual-ads is to save money (one 75 second ad spot costs less than two 60 second ad spots), as well as getting people interested in one product, then being pulled into being interested in the other.
Of course, the problem here may have become obvious from my depiction of the ad. If you’re ticked off about one product (in my case, the two-borderline-one star movie), you’re going to become ticked by the other product (which in this ad is the entire company HP).
Dual-ads were a nice idea to save money and suck people into two products for the price of one. But, they wind up sucking something else completely. Hybrid branding has been around for ages, but this ad crosses a line trying to mix products that have absolutely no relation to one another, and that’s going to wind up harming both products more than helping either.