Hitler Did Nothing Wrong

With the way that marketing is evolving today, companies are looking for more and more ways to advertise their products. However, not all of these are successful, especially when the internet is involved.

There are multiple examples of people trying to raise awareness of themselves, or their product through trying to do an internet poll. Whether it's Justin Bierber's "My World" concert, asking the people to pick where in the world he goes next (North Korea) to get his fans involved, or Pitbull teaming up with a product called Energy Sheets to see which Walmart Pitbull would visit to promote their product (Kodia, Alaska) in an attempt at market penetration, these have never been successful. The biggest flop ever for this however, has to be Mountain Dew's "Dub the Dew" campaign. As part of a new apple flavor of Mountain Dew, they started a poll asking people to vote on a name for it. They winner? Hitler Did Nothing Wrong. Now, this backfired to tremendously, that they canceled the promotion, and aside from a brief release as Mountain Dew Crave, the product never saw the shelf.

I think that while the idea behind these promotions is a good one, most of the people forget that their target market is a small part of the internet, and they're not going to be the only ones to notice it. However, if their marketing objective is to raise awareness of themselves or their product, then they're doing a good job of it. These stories have made headlines in multiple major news networks including ABC News and Time Magazine, which gets them more exposure than they may otherwise have had.