Adland

I'm a tad late with this news as I was busy with the super bowl commercials which I'm now thoroughly disappointed in and terribly sick of already. Still, for those who haven't heard it, SJ (train services) in Sweden launched a big teaser ad campaign - which was promptly hijacked by a porn site. Researcher has been keeping tabs of the twist and turns around the 95 campaign. (#1, #2)

First, brightly colored posters appeared all over Sweden. They were hot pink, day-glo green and such, and all they had written on them was 95. The idea being that people would care what the cryptic numbers were about, I confess I couldn't even be bothered to as much as glance twice at them. Then the wait, the usual two odd weeks as "buzz builds" and people discuss what the campaign might be for. Right. Seems that they waited too long because all of a sudden, a porn site sent out press releases to all brand-papers and newspapers claiming it was their campaign. The company Nordic adult had the balls to hijack the campaign, and even if most reporters didn't fall for it they reported on the hijack attempt, spelling out Nordic adult sites URL seeking the campaigns real sender for comment. "Oh how terrible, it feels really bad to be connected to a porn site" said Mark Vadasz, press CEO at SJ trains to the real sender of the campaign to Dagens Media. In effect, reporters were reporting about the porn-company, it might have been the first successful hijacking of a teaser campaign ever! Congrats to the porn site with balls. And dildos. And whatever else they sell.
Let that be a lesson to you kids. Teasers suck.

It gets funnier still, a reporter at Svenska Dagbladet, Martin Jönsson, wrote about how idiotic these teaser-campaigns are which I agree with, but then he confidently stated that "SJ are not the ones behind the campaign". In other words, he fell for the porno-press release. Psyche!

The cryptic 95 is simply to announce that SJ sells half a million train tickets for 95 SEK a pop, which is quite a bargain if you manage to get one of those tickets.

Technorati Tags: marketing mishaps

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