Last May in a Marketing Daily commentary, Beau Fraser commented on the phenomenon on “marketing tragedy,” companies doing a tie-in with natural and man-made disasters. The danger is coming off as self-serving or, as in the case of Kenneth Cole’s tweet about the revolution in Egypt being all about shoes, downright offensive. On a day wrought with so many emotions and political mine fields, Budweiser struck exactly the right tone:
UPDATE: After writing this post, Mediaite hit my mailbox with: Hooter’s Girls Remember 9/11. It’s got similar doleful music, but that’s where the similarities end. There’s none of the subtlety or good taste of the Budweiser spot, but I gotta say, it is still spot on. Mediaite called it right, so I’ll use their words: “The more I thought about it, the more it reminded me of just how great this country is. “God bless America,” say the women early on and they’re right. God bless a nation that allows us to go to restaurants filled with barely dressed 19-year-olds and pretend we’re there for the wings even though we all know we could get much better wings at the family-owned pizzeria down the street. America’s enemies can’t do that and that’s part of the reason they hate us. If more people on this planet got to relax after a long day by watching Hooters Girls do hula hoop floor shows, there’d be less wars.”