Class of 2018 Media Guy Hall of Shame Inductees

Okay, so where am I?

As you can see on the left, the call of Clio entries has been announced. That means I’m pulling together to campaigns from last year trying to see if I should spend $525 to $1,025 on entry fees to put my best work forward. It’s been a while since my last win. Maybe it was easier in the nineties when the wins came fast and furious. A losing streak can surely shake your confidence. That is, until you assess your work over the years and you realize that your campaigns have kicked ass and that ethos has never ebbed and always flowed. Yeah, that’s the ticket.


“Gosh, you’re so negative.”

In the course of doing this work in 2018, I earmarked a whole bunch of campaigns and ads that missed their mark. I don’t do that because I’m negative. I do it because the bad ads give you perspective to make great ads. Also, I’m hoping the people who run the companies making low awareness ads will call me. New business of sorts. The pay is good for me and the return on investment for the companies call is is large.

In 2016, I introduced my “You Should Have Called the Media Guy” columns where I basically call out tone-deaf CEOs and Chairmen who don’t bother to vet their advertising and lecture them on why a simple call to the Media Guy have saved them millions in bad publicity if they had only let me watch their spots first. The columns are quite popular. Catch up on missed columns here:

I write these columns opening wondering how advertising like this could have possibly made it past their high-paid teams of creatives and then when they do, they double down by spending millions of dollars in ad space to brag how clueless their ads are, tarnishing their brands along the way.

In spite of my well-read columns, there were companies that didn’t call and ran whatever felt right to them. Giants like H&M, Heineken, and Dolce and Gabbana proved they could generate some truly awful and ridiculous advertising last year. Hello Chief Marketing Officers: you can’t see the forest among the trees. Call me. A small consulting check made out to me could save embarrassment and, also, potentially, your jobs. Swallow your pride and just do it!

So while I covered some bad campaigns in the midst of 2018, here is the complete list of my newest inductees into the Media Guy Hall of Shame:

5. Hong Kong Tourism Board

This from my October 12th Column:

[The ad] left me murmuring to Dr. Lam, Mr. Lau, and the entire Hong Kong Tourism Board: “What were you thinking?” This spot does little else than to embolden emotional abuse in relationships while dressing it up as “romance” and “love.” After watching this, Hong Kong has zippo appeal and would never encourage sane people to visit. 

Want the full story? Click here.

4. Heineken

The Amsterdam-based beer company is nine hours ahead of me, so I can understand their trepidation about calling at odd times, but their “Sometimes, lighter is better.” commercial landed the brewer in hot water. The 30-second ad shows a bartender sliding a beer past three patrons, all of whom are African-American, to a lighter-skinned woman. The tag line reads “Sometimes, lighter is better.” Yikes!

Chance the Rapper took to Twitter calling it “terribly racist.” Thousands agreed.

3. Dolce & Gabbana

RESULT OF THE BAD CAMPAIGN: You think I’m kidding when I say bad advertising costs millions? After co-founder Domenico Dolce apologized to the public, and then was forced to cancel their Shanghai runway show.

WHY TO FUROR?: The luxury fashion line decided that  a marketing campaign full of ethnic stereotypes was their formula for success. The ad shows an Asian model attempting—and failing—to eat various Italian dishes with chopsticks. The public-at-large were outraged over the depiction of Chinese people as lacking refinement and an understanding of culture. That’s not to mention the sexually suggestive content.

That was only the start. Following the campaign’s launch, Diet Prada, a fashion-focused Instagram account, posted screenshots of an Instagram DM exchange between founder Stefano​ Gabbana and model Michaela Tranova, were Gabbana says “the country of [series of poop emojis] is China,” and “China Ignorant Dirty Smelling Mafia.” Of course the Diet Prada post went viral and the backlash was immediate. The hashtag #BoycottDolce immediately trended on the Chinese social media site Weibo. 

Click here to watch it on Instagram.

1. Domino’s Pizza

In Russia, Domino’s launched “Dominos Forever,” a campaign offering 100 free pizzas a year for 100 years to customers who inked their bodies with the brand’s logo
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Hundreds took them up on their offer and got inked and that’s when Domino’s pivoted, releasing restrictions such as size of the tattoo, as well as a 350-person cap on the offer. The promotion was immediately cancelled. No word on how many people were denied.