Hokay. So.
Welcome to yet another installment of DRINK. IT. IN. Today, we are talking about what annoys us. And more importantly, how being ANNOYING is actually a pretty effective marketing tactic.
If you check out this article from our friends at ever-reliable AdWeek, you’ll probably find the best example. As I’m sure you know, unless you’ve been camping in a Denisovan cave in Siberia for the past month, there is a spinoff of the film Despicable Me that came out on FRIDAY. Again, as you probably know, it’s called Minions. Maybe you even saw it over the weekend. But the Minions are freaking everywhere. <— That’s literally the title of the article.
Anyway, its obvious the franchise is wildly popular. Not only with the typical demographics of kids and parents, but also the ever-elusive audience of 18-34 year-olds. I remember seeing a bunch of people dressing up as Minions for Halloween when the first movie came out. And I was in college. So obviously there is a lot of hype for this movie. But there is potentially some backlash to these ubiquitous little creatures. Apparently there is a large group of parents that are vocal about their disdain for them, and a McDonald’s Happy Meal toy created in their likeness that apparently curses when you press it (you can check out the video here). And and even larger group on Reddit who have created a subreddit called MinionHate. Yeah. These things have really caused quite a conversation.
But, it seems to be working…the movie was set to have a 100 million dollar opening this weekend – which was better than any other animated movie opening this year. It’s already brought in $100 million overseas.
Either way, I wouldn’t recommend creating a marketing campaign focused on annoying your audience, and there’s no real research that shows how effective being annoying actually is. But it’s probably worth something. People are talking about it, I’m writing about it, and Twinkies are putting Minion faces on their delicious cream-filled sponge cakes. I don’t really know where I’m going with this…but I would say just keep it in mind. Annoying marketing is a double-edged sword of nonsense. Be careful.
Check out these articles from the HuffPost and Business 2 Community for some good, quick, chill outlines about how to toe the line between effective and annoying if you’re worried about your own strategies. It can be tough to really figure it out, and it’s okay, everyone can be annoying sometimes (I mean, look at me. Look at the name of this blog). But you get it. I’m sure you’re all lovely.