One Calorie; Tons of Attention

Suicide is far from funny.

This ad, however, is.

It's part of a Pepsi Max campaign over in Germany (!) and created by BBDO in Dusseldorf (!!!) (Check out the other two ads here.)

You may hate 'em, you may love 'em, but folks ain't ignoring them.

There are always inherent risks in pushing the boundaries of the extreme, but what other option do marketers have?  Well, there’s boredom, invisibility and irrelevance to name just three.

Chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov once said “What separates a winner from a loser is the willingness to do the unthinkable.” If you’re going after consumers, you might as well hit ‘em between the eyes, because a soft shot is a wasted shot.  Stand out or sit down.

Perhaps prolific marketing blogger Sally Falkow said it best in her thought-provoking "PRoactive" blog when she said:

"There are already 550,000 results for ‘Pepsi suicide ads’ in Google. 
A blog post about the ads is already at #11 when you search Pepsi Max.
Five of the ten results on page two for Pepsi Max are about these ads. 
Give it a few more days, with the links being created to these sites, and they’re going to end up on page one."

We have a name for this kind of stuff at Surprise Central.  It's one of the nine basic tactics of Surprise Marketing, and it's called "Shock and Ahhh..." which is best explained by saying that:

"...it penetrates senses swiftly and deftly, opens eyes, mouths and minds, and then settles the message’s recipient down with a feeling of 'Oh, I get it' relief.   In physical terms, it’s like a slap in the face immediately followed by a hug."

Worth your while to read Sally's whole post here. And to perhaps get a sense of humor.