In the spirit of poking lighthearted fun at some cringe-worthy marketing, I thought I’d share several marketing communications I’ve received.  Feel free to contribute your own.

First up is this email from Aduro, a financial software company serving the venture capital industry…

OMG!  A new logo!  And a new website too that uses color!!  Wow these guys are super leading edge.

Seriously, why do companies send marketing emails like this?  Yes, I understand you just paid a branding firm a quarter million dollars to add color to your logo that an intern could have done for twenty bucks, but do I really care as a customer?

Sorry, I misspoke.  It’s a ‘signature color scheme’, not just color.  Ten bucks extra if you want signature color.

This from Windstar, a cruise line…

It’s never a good sign when your cruise ship is in uncharted territory…

This from Cox Cable, my internet provider... who sent me a letter in the mail about their paperless bill...

These are too funny!!

Hahaha 😂. Whatever happened to Bored Panda and the FAIL blog? I used to see their stuff a lot. From Bored Panda:

static.boredpanda.com

static.boredpanda.com

62 Hilarious Advertising Placement FailsThere is no such thing as bad publicity. At least, not until you experience an ad fail disaster and the plane in your airline's poster looks like it's about to crash, or your food ad looks like a racy adult photo.www.boredpanda.com

This from Skytech, maker of gas fireplace systems...

Always good advice to not install something if you can't read or understand the instructions!

Today's head scratcher comes from Delta Dental, the well-known dental insurance provider, encouraging us to use 'teledentistry'.

Now I'm a big supporter of telemedicine and I understand well how that works - you call the doctor, describe your symptoms and the doctor sends a prescription to their pharmacy. But how exactly does teledentistry work? What exactly can a dentist do remotely?

Perhaps they will do a Zoom call and walk you through DIY dentistry procedures like this.

🤣

Today I plugged earbuds into my Lenovo laptop's audio jack, and up popped a Windows alert informing me that I had just plugged a device into the audio jack. Thank you Captain Obvious!

I hate these captain obvious messages from Google. If you try again, you get the same message, obviously.

From Arizona Family news (azfamily.com) is a bit confusing journalism. If the police don't know who the owners are of the missing emu, how do they know the emu is actually missing? Perhaps the emu does not have an owner and is simply on walkabout exploring Arizona?

Moreover, the journalist says, "...missing emu who was found..." Generally speaking, emus aren't people, so saying "who" is incorrect; the journalist should have said "which". Unless the journalist believes 'emus are people too'.

This email from United Airlines informs us that COVID-19 has changed our travel routines ... in case you've been living totally off-grid since March.

That said, at least they're going to start cleaning their planes for once!

Another missive from United Airlines informs us they are now going to clean their ticketing and lounge areas, and they're going to do it so well, they got a federally registered service mark for their cleaning service - United CleanPlus(SM). It's an odd time we live in when corporations feel compelled to brand the fact they clean their facilities.