Controversy Advertising Pitches
There's nothing worse than a boring ad.
Published Friday, March 10, 2023
There’s nothing worse than a boring ad. This is a short selection of advertising pitches for partnerships that aim to exploit existing media scandals in mutually beneficial ways.
I think we all remember Ariana Grande’s donut scandal–where she licked a donut without paying for it, then exclaimed “What the f*ck is that? I hate America!” as the employee placed a fresh tray of donuts in front of her. So, we are going to flip the script now, and she’s going to be licking the donut, but instead of her hating America, the tagline is “Ariana Loves America, ‘cuz America Runs On Dunkin.” The second part of the campaign will read “God is a Donut” and she’s fingering a donut.
Next is a partnership with Martha Stewart and Capitol Trades, a group that tracks the stock trades of all of the Congressional Representatives (including the representatives who sit on private committees, and have access to privileged information about the markets).
Martha Stewart, who’s best known for her cooking and home lifestyle brand, served prison time for [lying to investigators about] insider trading on the stock market. I think this would be a brilliantly sardonic advertisement partnership.
Next, we have Hilaria Baldwin and Duolingo. For those who don’t know, Hilaria Baldwin is either from Boston or from Mallorca… We aren’t really sure which, and it doesn’t really matter because you can learn English and Spanish on Duolingo.
Cut to clip of Hilaria Baldwin on the Today Show:
“We have tomatoes, we have–uhm…how do you say it in English? Cucumbers!”
Next is a partnership between Lindsay Lohan and Coke. I think that it’s a really great way to make light of her past, and if Coke is ballsy enough to hit the slopes, a skiing themed Coke commercial could be f*cking hilarious.
Last but not least, a partnership with Taraswrld in a SeatGeak commercial, with the slogan “finna get SeatGeek so I can be in the pit.” This girl when viral (on tiktok) because her ticket didn’t show up in her email when she got to the concert, so she spent ten grand because she was, quote, “finna be in the pit.”
Cut to Taraswrld video:
“I ended up spending ten thousand dollars at this Harry Styles concert. I usually use SeatGeek when I’m buying tickets. I always use SeatGeek, but for this like, specific concert… on Stubhub it was much cheaper. These tickets never made it to my email, and they said ‘Yeah… We can replace them with balcony tickets.’ I was like… ‘no, I finna be in the pit.’”
So, it’s definitely "niche," but would work for Tiktok.
