In late 2012, a year after the Occupy Movement had effectively reshaped the political protest landscape forever, Copenhagen-based Danske Bank – transliteration, “Danish Bank” – began rolling out their “New Normal” series of advertisements, some in print, some video. The primary video ad (below) – along with a series of “huge advertisement campaign” billboards in Copenhagen and other cities – provoked a firestorm response online, from Twitter users to the Harvard Business Review scathing the marketing ploys in an article titled “When an Ad Campaign Goes Horribly Wrong,” to click-frenzy media powerhouse BuzzFeed even calling the series of ads “shameless.”
Ouch.
“Many have criticised us for using images that depict the Occupy Wall Street movement in our new campaign,” the bank stated in a press release. “That is why we have decided to remove the images from the campaign. It was not our intention to offend anyone, only to show that the world is changing and that we are changing with it. We have only used the images in order to illustrate the criticism directed at the banks after the financial crisis.”
-via cphpost.dk
In other words, change is the new normal and Danske Bank just wants to be a part of it too. OK I’m being snarky. And you’re probably thinking this whole thing is blown out of proportion anyhow. So watch the video ad now with all that context in mind:
Right! I mean, the whole thing became such a parody of itself that it was hard to distinguish the actual ads from spoof ads, created by users online:
Lesson learned? Somehow I doubt it…
[via adland]
