We have a simple rule here at Awful Advertisements: Don’t sing in your commercial. Even if you hire the most talented singers and have a catchy beat or clever lyrics, it’s not going to work in your advertisement. Jingles are one thing, but a full television spot loaded with singing is usually a recipe for disaster.
Wendy’s has an ad which perfectly illustrates this point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRqlt2d9AQI
What did we do to deserve this? Honestly, even if we were remotely interested in your Melt, you lost us with this ad. Such is the result when you try to make people sing to explain the fact you have Portabella mushrooms on your sandwich. It’s almost painful to listen to Wendy try to carry a tune while explaining the ingredients.
Then there’s the message, which is that if you do something – anything apparently – you’ll earn one of these sandwiches. Remove a sticker off a guy’s pants? Sandwich time.
When we went to track down this ad on YouTube, we were faced with another annoyance. Wendy’s titled this ad “Earnthem” on their YouTube page.
It’s as if they were going to try and turn it into a hashtag but forgot the pound sign or forgot to press the space bar. Either way it looks like a mistake, which is rather fitting considering the entire concept is one big mistake.
