History TheScrappy / Advertising

* Cara Confused, a cartoon character who was the face of UK car insurance comparison website ''Confused.com''. Viewers mocked the bizarre appearance of the character, who in turn was based on the company's original logo, and the way the adverts appeared to show her pulling out random items -- from microphones to cars to a HOUSE -- [[TrouserSpace from under her skirt]], not helped by the way the company tried to excuse this by saying the objects came from her [[AccidentalInnuendo "magic pocket"]]. Viewers also disliked her singing voice -- performed by professional West End singer Louise Dearman -- and in her later commercials, her chest becoming more defined and noticeably... [[GainAxing bouncier]], as well as often stripping down to a bikini, [[FanDisservice which came off as simply weird rather than attractive.]] One of Cara's most viewed adverts, featuring a cover of ''"Somebody to Love"'' by Music/{{Queen}}, was eventually pulled when it emerged that [[MisaimedFandom the commercial was leading people to think Confused.com was a dating site.]] The campaign was finally dropped, and Cara was replaced with a new mascot.

* The animated GrubHub dancers became widely despised for their unbelievably cringeworthy moves mixed with butt ugly designs to the point that there's several editorials noting why their ad campaign was such a failure.

** For Domino's in the 80's this was the Noid. The character design was ''intended'' to be annoying ("Noid", "annoyed", get it?) but the designers went a little overboard with a giggling {{Foil}} who's voice sounded like a guy sucking helium. Kenneth Lamar Noid, a mentally-disturbed man, convinced that the character was an attack on him, held the staff of a Domino's in the Atlanta area hostage for five hours on January 30, 1989, but finally surrendered to police. Although, that didn't kill the Noid off--it was Kenneth's suicide in 1995 that did.

* GO COMPAAARE! GO COMPAAAARE! Do nothing rash, conserve your cash at GO COMPAAARE! Everyone in the U.K. cheered when Creator/JimmyCarr gave him quite the [[GroinAttack nutshot]] in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Euh9zWmASN4 this]] video. It was bad enough when the (thankfully fictitious) opera singer [[https://www.youtube.com/user/whosgio Gio Compario]] was just singing in people's houses; then he was doing it in the Stone Ages, in various countries, in the sky, as a woman... Go Compare actually got the hint about this one, however, so their "Saving the Nation" follow-up campaign [[TakeThatScrappy has him blown up, tortured, punched or otherwise abused by various celebrities]]. For instance, Creator/StephenHawking [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R66FGTWpD1k created a black hole just to suck the spokesperson out of existence]]. One of these gave him a SympathyForTheDevil moment, portraying him as an IronButtMonkey subjected to a ton of physical abuse for just trying to tell people about car insurance. However, much like the audience, the woman he is talking to has clearly lost ''all'' sympathy for him.

-->'''Nostalgia Critic:''' This bunny is rude. These people are just trying to do their thing, and he keeps getting in the way of it! How would you like if you were just going along your everyday life, and suddenly...
-->''[Cut to NC sitting on the toilet silently and tapping on his phone. Just as said, the Energizer Bunny appears, freaking NC out]''
-->'''Announcer:''' Still going. Nothing outlasts the Energizer.
-->'''NC:''' D'AAAHH!! Ah! A bunny! A bunny! Oh, my God! Oh! A bunny! A bunny! Oh, get it away! A bunny!

* The animated GrubHub dancers became widely despised for their unbelievably cringeworthy moves mixed with ugly designs.

* The replacement mascot for the Planters Peanut, Baby Nut, has pretty much gotten a massive hatedom over on Twitter, with people finding him obnoxious due to his overly-cutesy appearance and personality. Many see him as an attempt to cash in on the success of [[Series/TheMandalorian Baby Yoda]] as well. It probably didn't help that the advertising campaign started off with Mr Peanut dying in a crash, and then having to be suspended a week later due to the death of Kobe Bryant in a helicopter crash.

* Dear lord, the woman in the notorious Advertising/HeadOn commercials. Some viewers truly believe some EvilGenius thought this up, seeing as it may be the only commercial that seems to ''cause'' the medical condition its product claims to prevent.
** Legal Note: Head On does not claim to cure anything.

* Advertising/{{GEICO}} has a reputation for running even its most popular campaigns into the ground through [[OverlyLongGag endless repetition]]. For example, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9qcWljsT7s Peter Pan]] from GEICO's new "It's What You Do" ad campaign which a still-young Peter attending his class reunion (the class of 1965) and behaving obnoxiously towards his aged former classmates. Specific disdain is typically held for Peter's opening explanation of "Phiiilll!" as he flies over to greet his fellow alumni, mainly because it occurs so early in the commercial with little to no prior warning.

* Jeff, Dave and especially Brian representing [=MoneySupermarket.com=]. Following a campaign with vague similarities to the aforementioned Go Compare adverts, the three have been able to pull off anything they want purely because they used the site and "feel epic". Brian is the worst, strutting around Vegas and tossing a coin into a slot machine which spills out winnings, entering backstage to a performance, which he then hijacks, completely ignoring his family. The [[LargeHam hammy voiceover]] does not help at all.

* Citizens of the greater Los Angeles area may be familiar with a certain mattress salesman for Sit'n'Sleep Mattress Center that screams, in the most annoying voice possible, the phrases "You're killing me, Larry!" and "We'll beat anyone's advertised price or YOUR mattress is FREEEEEEEE!!!111!", the latter being particularly stupid because the emphasis is on "free" but why would they EVER give it to you for free if the advertised price is more than 0?

* Jared Fogle from the Subway ads always gave off this vibe. While it ''is'' pretty remarkable that he lost a ton of weight while eating their sandwiches (in addition to the actual dieting and exercising he was no doubt also doing), some appreciable level of charisma and appeal is needed to make an effective pitchman, and those were qualities Mr. Fogle unfortunately simply did not possess. Subway even had [[WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy Peter Griffin]] issue a TakeThat to Jared after he stopped plugging for them. Then came the revelation in 2015 that he was a '''child molester''', killing whatever positive opinions the general public still had about him.

* The man coming into the parties in those Heineken commercials enters by greeting foreigners in condescendingly westernized gestures and shows up everyone he sees at whatever they're most talented in. In one commercial, he jumps onstage and decides to show up the ''band playing the music''. In the other, he leaps through a Japanese-style paper door (essentially property damage to the high-class establishment) like it was designed for that. Essentially, he is being as smug as smug can get in front of a number of wealthy and/or important looking people and becomes the center of the party thanks to it.

* Carly Foulkes, also known as the "T-Mobile Girl" in most of her commercials, paired up with an incompetent owner of an inferior phone service, before they're informed of the superiority of T-Mobile. More recent commercials abandon this and simply have Foulks in a more MsFanservice role clad in skin tight leather riding a motorcycle.
* Riley Thomas Stewart's character in the 2010 Toyota Highlander ad campaign. To some (like this [[http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-ad-campaigns-that-prove-humanity-doomed/ Cracked article's writer]]), he is a smug SpoiledBrat. Airing around 2010-2011, the adverts featured Riley calling people/his parents "lame", "dorky" or a "geek family" on the horrendous basis that they're driving older or not as "classy" cars instead of the Toyota Highlander, and ending the commercial with the phrase, "Just because you're a parent doesn't mean you have to be lame". Needless to say, most people could not stand the spoiled, materialistic, entitled twerp's attitude towards his parents or shallow way of judging people.

* Wendy's has struggled whenever they've tried mascots and spokespeople outside of their founder, Dave Thomas (who died in 2002).

* Riley Thomas Stewart's character in the 2010 Toyota Highlander ad campaign. To some (like this [[http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-ad-campaigns-that-prove-humanity-doomed/ Cracked article's writer]]) he is a smug SpoiledBrat. Airing around 2010-2011, the adverts featured Riley calling people/his parents "lame", "dorky" or a "geek family" on the horrendous basis that they're driving older or not as "classy" cars instead of the Toyota Highlander, and ending the commercial with the phrase, "Just because you're a parent doesn't mean you have to be lame". Needless to say, most people could not stand the spoiled, materialistic, entitled twerp's attitude towards his parents or shallow way of judging people.

* Dee Lincoln, founder of the Del Frisco Double Eagle steakhouse chain in Dallas, did her own radio ads - much to the chagrin of radio listeners due to her Creator/FranDrescher-like voice. (Like Drescher, she wasn't a bad-looking woman in person, but that sadly doesn't translate over radio.)

* Dr. Pepper introduced Dr. Pepper Ten in 2011 as a low calorie soda for men. Their main advertisement featured an obnoxious pitchman who acted out scenes from a faux-action movie, telling female viewers that they couldn't appreciate this soda with its "ten '''[[LargeHam manly]]''' calories," ending with a tagline that the soda was "Not for women." Dr. Pepper eventually pulled the ad after negative backlash, reissuing the product with more gender-neutral branding.

* First National Bank (FNB) from South Africa had a series of radio adverts starring 'Steve', a constantly flustered call-centre agent who worked for the woe-fully inept BLEEP! Bank (name is bleeped out like its a curse word, as it's illegal to defame another product in advertising in South Africa). It should be noted that the character did not start out as a scrappy. The adverts were fairly clever in that they had a MythArc of sorts with Steve, at first, calling random customers to get them to join Bleep! Bank, only to have them tell him how awesome FNB is, and him eventually secretly going over to FNB while still working at Bleep! Bank and trying to keep it secret from his superiors. Though Steve could reasonably be considered a small pop-culture figure he eventually became a Scrappy for non-FNB clients who found the later adverts extremely condescending towards them. Others were put off by his constant use in radio adverts. When FNB took a break from Steve they had a condescending American narrator extol the virtues of FNB and why clients for other banks foolishly are losing out, which arguably irritated non-FNB clients even more. Later they tried to revive Steve by making him a flustered call-centre agent again, but that only annoyed FNB clients and fans, who felt that the character had grown and taking him back to square one was stupid. Eventually FNB stopped using him completely.

* GO COMPAAARE! GO COMPAAAARE! Do nothing rash, conserve your cash at GO COMPAAARE! Everyone in the U.K. cheered when Creator/JimmyCarr gave him quite the [[GroinAttack nutshot]] in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Euh9zWmASN4 this]] video. It was bad enough when the (thankfully fictitious) opera singer [[https://www.youtube.com/user/whosgio Gio Compario]] was just singing in people's houses; then he was doing it in the Stone Ages, in various countries, in the sky, as a woman... Go Compare actually got the hint about this one, however, so their "Saving the Nation" follow-up campaign [[TakeThatScrappy has him blown up, tortured, punched or otherwise abused by various celebrities]]. For instance, Creator/StephenHawking [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R66FGTWpD1k created a black hole just to suck the spokesperson out of existence]]. One of these gave him a SympathyForTheDevil moment, portraying him as an IronButtMonkey subjected to a ton of physical abuse for just trying to tell people about car insurance. However, much like the audience, the woman he's talking to has clearly lost ''all'' sympathy for him.

* The man coming into the parties in those Heineken commercials enters by greeting foreigners in condescendingly westernized gestures and shows up everyone he sees at whatever they're most talented in. In one commercial, he jumps onstage and decides to show up the ''band playing the music''. In the other, he leaps through a Japanese-style paper door (essentially property damage to the high-class establishment) like it was designed for that. Essentially, he's being as smug as smug can get in front of a number of wealthy and/or important looking people and becomes the center of the party thanks to it.

* Keith Stone from the Keystone Light beer commercials. The ads play him up as being every bit as smooth as the beer he's shilling, but he looks and sounds like the sort of dude whose last words will surely be "Hey, hold my beer and watch this!"

* Metro [=PCS=] has commercials starring a stereotypical Indian guy, who's best described as an EthnicScrappy. It also doesn't help that one Metro [=PCS=] ad continually states [[AccidentalInnuendo "Period Power"]].

* Jeff, Dave and especially Brian representing [=MoneySupermarket.com=]. Following a campaign with vague similarities to the aforementioned Go Compare adverts, the three have been able to pull off anything they want purely because they used the site and "feel epic". Brian is the worst, strutting around Vegas and tossing a coin into a slot machine which spills out winnings, entering backstage to a performance, which he then hijacks, completely ignoring his family. The [[LargeHam hammy voiceover]] doesn't help at all.
* The "Puppymonkeybaby" for Mountain Dew: Kickstart that debuted during Super Bowl 50. It's a disturbing-looking hellspawn with the torso and tail of a monkey, the face of a dog, and the legs of a human infant, and moves around in an unnatural, jittering way while chanting its own name. It received tons of social media buzz when it was first revealed, the vast majority of which was people complaining about how creepy the thing was.
* Halloooo! Frank Walker from National Tiiiiles wants to know why he's hated by every Australian with a radio and is still somehow in business.

* Hallie Eisenberg -- or, as people liked to call her at the end of TheNineties, the Pepsi Girl. The primary gimmick of her ads was her extreme little-girl cuteness being undercut by her suddenly speaking in a tough guy voice (Creator/JoePesci's in the original ad) when she couldn't get a Pepsi. Not bad once, but as with most ads in which kids doing benignly unkiddy things is the gimmick, it got old fast.

* The monkey from Subway Canada deserves a mention, mainly because it has nothing to do with the company, and it's [[UncannyValley very ugly]].

* Riley Thomas Stewart's character in the 2010 Toyota Highlander ad campaign. To some (like this [[http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-ad-campaigns-that-prove-humanity-doomed/ Cracked article's writer]]) he's a smug SpoiledBrat. Airing around 2010-2011, the adverts featured Riley calling people/his parents "lame", "dorky" or a "geek family" on the horrendous basis that they're driving older or not as "classy" cars instead of the Toyota Highlander, and ending the commercial with the phrase, "Just because you're a parent doesn't mean you have to be lame". Needless to say, most people couldn't stand the spoiled, materialistic, entitled twerp's attitude towards his parents or shallow way of judging people.

* The beer commercials featuring the [[http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-ad-campaigns-that-prove-humanity-doomed_p2/ super-snarky female bartender]] mocking patrons for their skinny jeans, man-bags and tramp-stamp tattoos. Maybe she's on to something about these things being undignified, but she should have the sense to know that acting like a condescending bitch to her customers - ''whose tips she depends on for her livelihood'' - is not a very smart thing to do.

* The 2017 advert for ''TUI'' is hated by many due to how overplayed it is and most notably, the lead girl who sings (very poorly in the eyes of viewers) and ends up irritating viewers as soon as they keep hearing "Oh, oh, oh oh....". The sad thing is, it's a rendition of a popular song called "Ain't Nobody" by Rufus & Chaka Khan.

* ''Advertising/NeverSayNoToPanda'': The panda is one of the most hated advertising mascots of all time due to how meanspirited it is, especially in the ad where it killed a hospital patient over rejecting his food.

* The replacement mascot for the Planters Peanut, Baby Nut, has pretty much gotten a massive hatedom over on Twitter, with people finding him obnoxious due to his overly-cutesy appearance and personality. Many see him as an attempt to cash in on the success of [[Series/TheMandalorian Baby Yoda]] as well.

* The Talking Hat in the Steak N' Shake ads, along with the H.H. Gregg Ad (as in, the character is ACTUALLY a rolled up advertisement) are both characters who try to be lovable, friendly, and witty. They tend to get on peoples nerves with their fast paced talking style, however. Not surprisingly, both companies use the same ad agency, and one of them, if not both, is changing over to a new agency based on how ill-received the ads have been.

* Mr. Bag in advertisements for Checkers & Rally's drive-in restaurants. Once again in the same way as Steak & Shake's Bag and Advertising/{{Hhgregg}}'s h.h, he was supposed to be a very friendly and upbeat character, but did nothing but wisecrack with annoying jokes and a voice too fast to understand with a Creator/ChrisRock sound-alike. The company dropped him in mid-2016.

* There was an Audi advert in the United Kingdom where an arrogant [[{{Yuppie}} yuppie]] is driving an Audi, while talking about looking after number one, and how your car makes a statement about you and you want that statement to be that you're a winner, and so on. And just when the audience completely hates him and, by extension, the car, [[SubvertedTrope he drives it back to the showroom, gets out and says to the dealer, "Nah, not my style, mate."]] Message - Buy our car and you won't be [[SmugSnake this guy]]. Pretty clever, actually...

* There was an Audi advert in the United Kingdom where an arrogant yuppie is driving an Audi, while talking about looking after number one, and how your car makes a statement about you and you want that statement to be that you're a winner, and so on. And just when the audience completely hates him and, by extension, the car, [[SubvertedTrope he drives it back to the showroom, gets out and says to the dealer, "Nah, not my style, mate."]] Message - Buy our car and you won't be [[SmugSnake this guy]]. Pretty clever, actually...

* The 2020 [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks redesign]] of Fruit Loops mascot Toucan Sam got a massive hatedom ''as soon as he was revealed''. Mostly for being extremely lazily designed, his beak is overlayered with a rainbow filter instead of having individual stripes, his eyes are so large and sparkly, he looks like he is constantly on some sort of FantasticDrug and especially his mouth ''overlayering'' the edge of the beak has gotten a lot of crticism. It's pretty clear that the marketing team is trying to [[WereStillRelevantDammit emulate modern cartoon styles]], while having [[ShallowParody absolutely no idea what made those work]] and falling deeply into the UncannyValley instead. Plenty of artists on Twitter have made it their objective to make their own redesigns, in a situation that can be compared to [[Film/SonicTheHedgehog2020 the Sonic movie]].

* Advertising/ErinEsurance was once quite popular, but by 2010 (six years after her debut) she had become pretty ''un''popular, doing [[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-erin-esurance-autopsy-she-was-less-popular-than-microsofts-clippy/ worse than Clippy]] in a survey of corporate mascots. Oh, she ''did'' have fans... [[MisaimedFandom the wrong kind, that is.]] Thanks to her attractive design, she gained a RuleThirtyFour following, with pornographic fanart of her frequently showing up alongside official images on Google, stigmatizing the character and forcing Esurance to get rid of her to avoid association with pornography. Aside from this reason, she also became prime SnarkBait in the media as well, with other insurance companies mocking the mascot for undermining the company by implying how childish it made them look and even ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' lobbied a pretty harsh TakeThat at the character by portraying her as a [[NoSympathy coldhearted]] {{Jerkass}} who let a customer be murdered [[DisproportionateRetribution just because he didn't have the most up-to-date coverage.]]

* The rather distinctive-looking Howard Brown used to be the face of the advertising for Halifax (a major UK bank). He appeared in a series of commercials singing various pop hits with new lyrics about banking. The ads became wildly popular but also attracted a ton of anti-fans who became sick of Brown's face and the awful music. Brown then started taking lesser roles in the ads and the main song was performed by someone else; particular loathing was directed at an ad that featured a fat woman instead. In 2008 it was decided to drop the musical adverts because of the recession, and the {{Hatedom}} breathed a sigh of relief. And then they go and make new adverts with particularly loathsome employees "rapping" along to Music/VanillaIce. If this is the price of scraping out of recession, well...

* The replacement mascot for the Planters Peanut, Baby Nut has pretty much gotten a massive hatedom over on Twitter for being extremely cringy and trying to cash in on the success of [[Series/TheMandalorian Baby Yoda]].

* The replacement mascot for the Planters Peanut, Baby Nut has pretty much gotten a massive hatedom over on Twitter for being extremely cringy and trying to cash in on the success of Baby Yoda.

* The Energizer Bunny fell into this for a while, especially during the 90s. The commercials at the time typically depicted some important battery-powered device failing, while the signature pink bunny plowed through the scene pounding a drum, with the promise that it will "keep going, and going, and going...". Many viewers found the bunny obnoxious, presumably because the victims of failure due to cheap batteries were mocked with a drive-by drumming - subtly implying that you're an asshole who deserved dud batteries for not using Energizer. At one point a "Worst Commercials on TV" special resulted in a viewer vote of the Energizer Bunny as most hated mascot - ending with a doll of the bunny being stuffed into a blender and stopped for good. The perpetual motion bunny made an image recovery after he stopped being portrayed as such a dick.

** For Domino's in the 80's this was the Noid. The character design was ''intended'' to be annoying ("Noid", "annoying", get it?) but the designers went a little overboard with a giggling {{Foil}} who's voice sounded like a guy sucking helium. Kenneth Lamar Noid, a mentally-disturbed man, convinced that the character was an attack on him, held the staff of a Domino's in the Atlanta area hostage for five hours on January 30, 1989, but finally surrendered to police. Although, that didn't kill the Noid off--it was Kenneth's suicide in 1995 that did.