FiM: Your Segment is Over There.... Way Over There....

As if Uggs for Men wasn't wrongheaded enough, someone in R&D thought the next breakthrough segment was is the realm of wedding shoes (you will have to select the Australia Store to view).

Because, as we all know, sheepskin boots/slippers coated in sparkles/fluff hair is exactly what every women has secretly been craving to reach for on her wedding day.

But, hey, I'm a guy. What do I know. I could even conceivably be wrong here. Personal experience says otherwise though: the wedding day is the one day most girls - even the most non-girly girl ones - actually want to go girly-girl. In a dressy way, not a "something I'd wear to lounge around the house" way and, while I'm sure Uggs could design a wedding shoe using their staple components, all they've really done here is bleach the basic model white, coat them in sparklys and/or throw some gems on the side, and add extra fluff.

In other words: they've taken comfort wear and dressed it up as gaudy shit that runs up to $225 Australian. The list of people who aren't paid to want that who'll want it is not likely to be that long.

FiM: How to Annoy a Community in 3 Easy Steps

1) Hire/Assign a representative to act as liaison to the Community and announce to great fanfare.

2) Let them begin working with the community on getting answers to their questions.

3) Release them from Employment with you 6 days after they get the questions and 23 days after you've sent them in during a round of layoffs.

<insert facepalm here>

Seriously guys, did no one stop and question just how big of a tease and/or douche this was going to make you look? Worse, it seems no one had any answers prepared for when the natives have found out and want to know where all the projects this guy was running are going to land.

It's one thing to miss the former, it's a complete other to miss the latter because you had to have known the question would be coming.

FiM: Yeah... Because this is Going to Happen...

Watch this video, which is... well... not pornographic but probably of questionable Work Safeness depending on who comes in the room.


Ok...

Yeah.

Now, I know the game is apparently a European Only release... and I know Europeans are stereotypically "liberal" when it comes to sex... but... really? Someone thought it was going to be profitable to make a make-out/sexually flirtatious party game for the Wii? This either speaks to the enormous baseline cost/profit ratio of the "Party Game" genre... or... someone's really desperate to get laid.

Dirty Minds amongst a group of mutual friends is one thing but I'm honestly not sure exactly where you'd find enough guys with girlfriends who want to get together and play a spanking mini-game outside of a BDSM convention and they'd probably find this too tame. Meanwhile, the "choose your own adventure" closing pitch that you're all gonna head off to an orgy/wife swap/stand around lonely while the girls go Lez afterwards is just... wow... dreamland would be an understatement.

This is the type of game someone brings out in a Revenge of the Nerds movie, the guys go "yeah!", and the girls look at each other like: "why the fuck are we dating these idiots?", while heading out of the room. Or, in a more recent genre, the point where Alyson Hannigan interjects and wonders why you're not just cracking open her collection of Japanese Se... err... "Dating Simulators".

I say this because the whole thing, as presented in the video, is otherwise so innocuous, graphically non-pornographic and dumb enough to have originally been a 12 year old's first mixed gender "kissing closet" party game repackaged as something fun to do for "Adults". Why? Because some idiot somehow decided stuffing a Wii controller into your butt-crack and spanking it would be a fun game mechanic so it has to be or else someone will scream about what's being sold to kids. So, we get this bullshit ad campaign as a "It's intended for Adults, and parents should control their kids", cover to hide behind when it gets into kids hands anyways.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not remotely a "all video games are for kids" guy. But, when you're attempting to game the system this poorly, I'm not gonna get in line to call a spade a rake either.

FiM: Here's how That Really Goes...

Dear Trojan Ad Executive,

Your new commercial for your "Personal Massager" is trying way too hard to establish your product as "acceptable". Lets be honest here for a second, the vast majority of guys who've just been told their fiance got 3 vibrators from her closest friends at her bachelorette party are not going to scream: "Sweet!" like their team just won the Superbowl.

They're gonna be wondering exactly just how bad she's been telling them the sex was to make three of them think to grab that first...

Because, when it comes to these things, one is a "novelty gift", two is "ok, they wore the same dress to the ball", but three+ is: "What the hell have you been saying about me during girl talk?"

Addendum: Yeah, I get the whole: "blows your hair back!" thing is your pitch line here... but did you stop to consider the implications of it within the context of this ad? Are you implying those three women tested the product before giving it to their friend? 'cause that would be kinda icky...

Failures in Marketing: Missing the Pitch...

Dear Silk ad campaign manager,

Claiming "Silk is the best tasting Soy Beverage ever!" is functionally equivalent to saying "the Ford Pinto is the best compact car that explodes in rear end collisions!" It's not going to convince anyone to try your product because it does nothing to attack peoples preconceptions of your product.

I'm not even sure it would convince someone who likes soy milk to drink it.