Marketing Yoda

One of the Yoda franchises - Lego Yoda with brick light sabre!

When embarking on the slightly risky venture of a complete Z-A of anti-marketing I knew that some letters would be problematical. Z was hard enough but Y was opening a whole new box of difficulty. I eventually went for YODA - good old Yoda, the saviour of so many lists. And so, my anti-marketing voyage through the alphabet can be saved. Hopefully, I'll be feeling similarly inspired by the time X arrives.

So, why Yoda? Well, the poor little fellow has been much used and abused in so many commercials and advertisements ever since he in Star Wars first appeared. Two great examples below of accidental marketing which were not intended or envisaged by the marketing teams involved.

The US food giant, Kraft, created a TV commercial which was supposed to demonstrate how valuable and collectible their macaroni cheese had become (not joking, honestly) - a commodity to be treasured for some unfathomable reason. Unfortunately, in the commercial, when a father shows his small son his room of Star Wars collectibles and memorabilia (including Yoda, of course), the young boy simply says: "Toys you can't play with and mac and cheese you can't eat. This is a room full of lies." The commercial produced a mass of debatable publicity about the sadness of adults and the clear honesty of children. It did not give Kraft the image they had intended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnRs2WbvWhg

Then there was something called Yodafone - a commercial which also exhibited all the aspects of accidental marketing gone seriously wrong. The Vodafone marketing team must have thought they had hit upon a great storyline with their ad. featuring people so engrossed in their phones that they completely ignored disaster on an epic scale all around them. The rather tortured tagline, 'Be lost in your favourite stuff on the go' only succeeded in showing a dystopian future where, for example, builders were so absorbed in looking at a football match on their phones that they risked killing a passer-by with a hoist and a heavy object. "It's terrifying and irresponsible" said one observer, also complaining that he still did not know what 4G was. The fact that Yoda then saved the day did not help much either with most viewers agreeing that the potential victims deserved their messy end. A few viewers added that the commercial advocated staring at mobile phones in the street whatever the dangers because a magic Yoda would always be there to save you from embarrassment or death! "May the farce be with you" said one final critic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK-MJIHv0Hc

Accidental marketing is marketing which goes wrong (or right) due to unexpected factors which the marketing team did not foresee when the campaign was first created. But it can go right as well, of course. Marilyn Monroe once said that the only thing she wore in bed at night was Chanel No.5. You can imagine what happened to sales the next day. Chanel was delighted with the unexpected comment and the subsequent welcome boost to sales.

So thanks Yoda for giving me the chance to talk about accidental marketing when it backfires and succeeds.

Next up is X.

More on stuff like this can be found here:

https://www.lulu.com/en/gb/shop/adrian-liley/the-anti-marketeers-handbook-directors-cut/paperback/product-166jzkq8.html