ya missed the target!

when i went through college i learned, in an advertising class, how to NOT run a campaign…

…and you learn about the coca-cola exec who ran the brazilian campaign in spanish even though brazilians speak portugese. or the chevy exec who tried to sell the chevy nova in mexico (“no va” translates to “no go”, as in “doesn’t fucking run” in spanish). but with today’s digital trackers and cookies and shit you’d figure this just didn’t happen anymore, right? but then…

in the middle of a cracked article railing against how taco bell is horrible quality (i remember for a bit they were at least honest and labeled themselves, on their own bags, “america’s favorite MEXICAN STYLE FOOD“) the ad that dropped (and was paid for) was some online thing where you get paid with a TACO BELL GIFT CARD.

i know this wasn’t human error. at this point human beings don’t make these kind of decisions, i’d reckon. some bot, some where, scanned the article, caught that taco bell was mentioned multiple times (all of them quite disparaging) and “thought” to itself, “this mentions taco bell a lot, so we should place the taco bell gift card give away here so they’ll read about taco bell, want taco bell, and try for the gift card!”

although just the bit of the article you can read from the screenshot would indicate that’s not a great move. still not the worst one i’ve seen, though.