Amazon Prime Video’s show, “The Boys“, has been airing since July 2019. This year, however, there have been two marketing campaigns that backfired so badly that I can only ask: Why?
In early August, mobile Tumblr users opened their ads to see a full screen video ad for “The Boys” featuring Karl Urban’s face. To get to their content, users had to scroll past the ad, and any time they refreshed their dashboard feed, the ad would appear again.
“Personally I come to tumblr for the giant face of a bearded man filling up my entire screen every time I open the app,” joked Tumblr user joematar. “That is what the site has always meant to me and I hope it never changes.”
“Listen,” snarked user immaplatypus. “Staff. Amazon. Anybody. I am sick and tired of seeing every single one of this ad dude’s nose hairs every time I refresh the page. “The boys are back in town? Freaking evict them.”
After only two days of complaining and joking about the ad, it disappeared, with Tumblr staff presumably realizing their mistake. As of today, searching for “The Boys” on Tumblr rewards you with memes about how much everyone hated the ads, rather than content for the actual show.
Three days ago, EA’s wrestling game UFC 4 patched in ad placements that appeared during the “Replay” moments in gameplay. Ads for “The Boys” popped up at the beginning and end of replays, and an ad for “The Boys” also appeared on the canvas of the wrestling ring. This patch was released two weeks after the release of the game, which means the ads weren’t seen by game reviewers.
“The full retail price plus being bombarded with advertisements is a real slap in the face,” said Reddit user ryangoddard1984. UFC 4 costs $60.
Video game journalist YongYea added in his own video on the topic, “EA was fully aware that there would be backlash, they were just testing the waters to see how much the backlash would be, to what extent the backlash would spread.”
Much like the ads on Tumblr, EA removed the in-game ads on Sunday, only a day after the ads were put into the game.
I have never seen “The Boys”, nor do I ever plan on watching it. It didn’t seem more than slightly interesting when it first came out, and after these scummy campaigns I wouldn’t touch the show with a 10-foot pole even if it was amazing. I have to wonder, why would advertisers for “The Boys” advertise the show like this?
I think these campaigns were deliberate. Tumblr and EA were likely fully aware that there would be backlash to their advertisement campaigns, yet they chose to proceed with them. Either the campaigns wouldn’t be noticed and the companies would know they could proceed with ads delivered in the same manner, or there would be backlash and the companies could ride off the negative press.
I’ve written about disastrous ad campaigns before, and that’s because I think it’s important to be aware of the things ad companies are trying to pull. As YongYea said in his video, “if this is something that people let slide, even a bit, it’s something that will get worse and worse over the years.” If we ignore big ad campaigns like this now, they’ll only continue to get worse until we stand up to them.
At some point, advertisers are going to have to recognize that their ads are not welcome in most platforms. It’s why we have ad blockers. It’s why we skip ads on video sites like YouTube. It’s why we invented devices that skip ads on TV. If advertising companies read the room a little better and worked to make sure their ad campaigns weren’t disastrously annoying, maybe the products they’re selling would have better odds.
Categories: Opinion
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