Self Deprecation / Advertising

• The original ads for the Volkswagen Beetle constantly mocked the car for its small size. Allegedly this violated one of the unwritten rules of advertising, "Don't mock the product." The ad campaign was a smash success. This was the famous "Think Small" ad campaign of 1959. This, and its successor of 1960 ("Lemon") started the so-called "Creative Revolution" in advertising: put the creative guys in charge of selling the ad. This ad series gets a Shout-Out in Mad Men: in Season 1, set in 1960, which Don Draper does not approve (talking derisively about its creator, Julian Koenig) — yet by Season 4 (starting in November 1964), his ads are more or less in the same vein. Mocking cars for their smallness seems kind of strange now, with cities getting larger and more people being able to afford a car, and many people take the ability to park over performance. This was Justified, however, as The '50s and Sixties were a different time, in which the Beetle was small compared to the "land yachts" and muscle cars of the period.
  • Volkswagen has used this fairly often, including in this ad for the Karmann Ghia sports car. "It's the most economical sports car you can buy. It's just not the most powerful."
  • Also, there was the Blind Brothers Three advert:
  Blind Brother: Brother, what kind of limousine is this?
  Driver: It's a Volkswagen, sir.
  All the Blind Brothers: (laughing in unison) Yeah? And we're the Pointer Sisters!
  • This even extends to other parts of the Volkswagen Group. A series of Škoda ads for the UK market played on their past, pre-VW buyout reputation there for poor quality cars by having people see a new Škoda and refuse to believe that such a great car could be made by the same company that made those awful cars that were subject to all sorts of dad jokes playing off their reputation. For example, this 2000 ad for the Fabia used the tagline "It's a Škoda. Honest."
• Michael Bay is known to indulge in a bit of this, a good example being this commercial.
• Billy Mays' commercial for ESPN360.com is a parody of his infomercials.
• The ESPN Sports Center ads are usually at the expense of the athletes, the anchors or the company itself.
• A Burger King ad for a breakfast sandwich that's a ripoff of the Egg McMuffin depicts the King breaking into the McDonald's headquarters, stealing the McMuffin recipe, and escaping on a scooter. Also counts as Refuge in Audacity.
  • Another instance came after a few of the ads involving the King Mascot. People across the internet began referring to the mascot as "the creepy king" based on both the Unintentional Uncanny Valley appearance of the person and the way he always appeared in very odd situations offering people a burger or breakfast sandwich. The commercials started to refer to him as "The Creepy King".
• The Super Bowl XLV ad for Best Buy's "Buyback" program shows Ozzy Osbourne being replaced as a pitchman by Justin Bieber. Ozzy asks "What's a Beiber?" and a stagehand responds "I dunno, kinda looks like a girl." The stagehand is Justin Bieber in a wig.
• The infamous "HeadOn, apply directly to the forehead" commercials have been superseded by a variant where the product's mantra is interrupted by people excoriating the repetitiveness of the commercial.
  "I hate your commercials, but I love your product!"
• Miracle Whip has a commercial that falls into this; half of it is various celebrities praising Miracle Whip, while the other half is other celebrities talking about how disgusting it is.
  • They may have taken inspiration from Marmite's famous "Love It or Hate It" campaign.
• Some years ago, a Dutch brand of condiments had a special offer where their products would come with free napkin-rings with funny limericks written on them. In the commercial, a lady was shown reading the napkin-ring with an increasingly obvious lack of interest, then throwing it in the trash.
• The official slogan of Buckley's cough medicine is: "It tastes awful. And it works."
• Stan Freberg created a memorable series of ads for the Sunsweet prune company, emphasizing what people dislike most about the dried fruit: the wrinkles and the pits. They boasted that they'd gotten rid of the pits; the wrinkles were another matter. "Today, the pits. Tomorrow, the wrinkles. Sunsweet marches on."
• Vince Offer, previous commercial pitchman for the Sham Wow!, has been pitching commercials for a product called the Schticky. At one point in the commercial, he says "Use it during moments you'd like to forget!" as a mugshot is taken of him, referencing his earlier arrest for assaulting a prostitute.
• A Capital One ad ends with one of the vikings asking Alec Baldwin if he can play games on his smartphone; he responds "Just not on the tarmac, believe me!" This refers to an infamous incident where Baldwin got thrown off an airplane for refusing to stop playing Words with Friends long enough for the plane to take off.
• Insurance comparison site Go Compare's adverts starring Gio Compario, a fictional tenor who sang an irritating jingle, were voted the UK's most annoying advert two years running. Go Compare responded by running a series of ads in which various celebrities inflict harm on Gio, such as blowing him up with a rocket launcher, kicking him in the groin, or sucking him into a black hole, all with the tagline "Saving The Nation".
• One case where this sort of thing seriously backfired was McDonald's $100 million advertising campaign - one of the most expensive in history - to promote the Arch Deluxe. Billed as a "hamburger for adults", several of the commercials (none of which were very appealing) expressed how much children would not like it. Both the campaign and the product was a failure, which likely resulted in a management shake-up.
• Hemglass uses the slogan, "Hemsk musik. God glass." It means "Horrible music. Good ice cream." The music in question one of the most infamous tunes in Sweden, and signals the arrival of the ice cream truck to the neighbourhood.
• Ozzy Osbourne makes fun of the fact that people can barely understand him in this cellphone commercial.
• Tesco Mobile - a mobile network provider that's effectively a punchline in the UK - ran a series of ads riffing off that reputation. Someone would admit to being on Tesco Mobile, everyone in the vicinity would laugh at them for it, then a famous comedian would appear and stop the laughter by pointing out Tesco Mobile's award-winning features.
• This has been the MO of Domino's Pizza starting in 2009. They are essentially admitting publicly they are trying to repair their image with the Domino's Pizza Turnaround campaign, and went downhill from there as they became the Rodney Dangerfield of fast food delivery.
• For Super Bowl XLVIII, Radio Shack said of themselves: "The '80s called. They want their store back."
• Pro soccer star Landon Donovan began making commercials mocking his controversial exclusion from the US roster for The World Cup. One for EA sports where he plays himself winning the title - on his couch, in the videogame - and another for Nike mocking "short memories".
  Donovan-They couldn't cut me, I'm the captain!
• During the 1960s and 1970s, the California Public Utilities Commission stated that General Telephone of California (GTE, now owned by Verizon) was "the worst telephone company in the country, bar none." GTE ran TV ads including this one where a Public Relations flack announced (to boos and catcalls) that they were improving their facilities and equipment to provide better telephone service, while showing him being pelted with eggs, tomatoes and a cream pie.
• Brigham Young University, whose sports teams are nicknamed "Cougars", ran a promotional campaign in the early 2010s called "Real Cougar", a series of commercials featuring notable BYU people (mostly sports alums, plus a couple of coaches) interacting with an actual cougar (obviously inserted by computer). In one of the ads, Pro Football Hall of Famer Steve Young had this interaction with the cougar:
  Young – I love BYU so much, I even got my law degree here.^note He actually did.
  Cougar – (growls)
  Young – Lawyers... I know.
• In this commercial, MC Hammer seems to be mocking his old "Can't Touch This" hit.
• The ad for Splendid chocolate depicts children eating the product and cringing in disappointment once they realize how dark chocolate tastes like. The slogan is "When you grow up, you'll get it".
• In one of the ads for MeTV, Thelma Harper declares "that Vicki Lawrence is overrated".
• A promotional video from scientific equipment manufacturer Analtech (often pronounced by folks in the industry as "Anal-tech") features the announcement "Analtech. Short 'A,' people. Grow up."
• Please Re-elect Gerald portrays Texan commissioner Gerald Daugherty as being so obsessed with helping people in his precinct that he is intolerable to be around in a domestic situation. The advert ends with his wife pleading with voters to re-elect him just to get him out of the house. He got re-elected.
• The infamous Scare 'Em Straight "This is your brain on drugs" PSAs used throughout the 1980s to 2000s may have been the norm at the time, but they've since come under scrutiny for not working and, if anything, making people want to use drugs more. In the mid-2010s new ads were produced where teens see the ad and are confused by the egg metaphor. The new ads suggest that parents actually sit and talk with their children about drugs, rather than trying to vaguely scare them away from drugs.
• A 2019 ad for Australia lamb laments that "we can't even hold onto a prime minister".
• As of early 2020, Progressive Insurance has taken this angle for their television ads, such as "announcing" that they have a theme park and being all enthusiastic about it only to immediately cut to Flo, Jamie, and a few other characters standing in front of the ticket booth and disappointedly looking out at a completely empty parking lot. Another is a fake ad for "Progressive on Ice" with fake reviews tacked on to the effect of "But why, though?" and "I had the whole row to myself."
• This Lunchables Uploaded ad makes fun of the product's Totally Radical stance by having Malcolm McDowell play a teenager. Malcolm screws up some of the slang to the production crew's annoyance.
• The Polish ad campaign for AliExpress on Facebook heavily relies on the machine-provided "Blind Idiot" Translation of the products. Photo of a product is paired with a translation error and a snarky comment, for example "Pets are hat" and "The best doggie is not just a doggie, but a hat as well." Sometimes, the snarky comment is a shout-out to something else, like "For coffee, but modest" above a photo of a tacky coffee set (a reference to a quote from the movie "Kler", where a massive golden crozier head is said to be "Gold, but modest").
• French makeup brand Bourjois sold a mascara called "Coup de Théâtre" with a dual applicator - two brushes, one each for length and thickness. When they released an updated version of the product with just one brush, the advertising featured actress Lou Delaage complaining that the original mascara was annoying and took too long to apply.
• In 2021, The General began an ad campaign that revolved around making fun of their older, more cheesy and cheaply animated commercials and trying to reassure customers that they're a quality insurance company.
• Hyundai did a series of ads in some markets mocking their past reputation for poor quality cars. One of the slogans used was "Hyundai. Yes, Hyundai."
• In 2021, Tom Brady was interviewed on a show called The Shop and complained about a team going with a different quarterback over him - "You're sticking with that motherfucker?" Many people speculated he was referring to then-Miami Dolphins QB Ryan Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick later starred in a commercial for Ryan Reynolds' Aviation Gin, and Reynolds ended it with a G-rated version of the same line.
• The ad campaign for Microsoft Office XP is basically Microsoft's apology for creating Clippy in the first place.
  • There's also a joke about Microsoft Bob, an earlier Microsoft assistant program with a poor reputation, in the short "Clippy Gets Clipped". An office worker that Clippy has ticked off compares Bob to Clippy as "the most annoying thing in computer history".
  Clippy (flattered): You know Bob? He's a friend of mine!

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