The advertisement on Google, which pops up on a search for “Goog” (Google’s Nasdaq symbol): “Before you jump out of that window, why not spend your last remaining dollars at Woot?” An alternative version: “Losing your House? Without that mortgage to pay, now you can buy more of our junk!”
Offensive, or offensively funny? It probably depends on whether you are one of the people who’ve lost it all on Google’s stock recently. And really it doesn’t matter, because it’s going to send a lot of people to Woot’s popular ecommerce site, which lists a different item every day at a discounted price. And when they run out of that item, you have to wait until the next day for something new.
Thanks to SlackerAtWork for the tip.
Not offensive
Funny+1
I’m forgainst it.
People are far too serious. And this fits well into the Woot ethic. Man I love those guys.
Not offensive. Hilarious actually. lol.
+1 on them being hilarious
HILARIOUS! I am buying the next thing just b/c of those ads.
Funny+1
I’ve purchased some of their better items in the past, spoken to the owners, shared the link, forum, etc.
This is just an ignorant campaign. And the whole ‘any attention is good attention’,
is bullshit. If you can’t attract enough action without adding to the pollution,
then screw.
Their earlier ads were funny as hell, and got me back there at least for a peep.
Wrong. Funny.
loosen up, that is good stuff!
Very clever, but pretty cruel I think. Kudos on the creativity, but … really, when you just lost thousands of dollars (or more), this is kind of smug, don’t you think?
not a big fan of woot, but i’m glad this is finally a kinda funny search ad. tv ads tend not to be funny at all, but at least they try. google ads would probably be much more effective if they were more creative than “Looking for Floral Umbrella? Try Target.com!”
I should add that maybe I’m sensitive because a dad of 2 from our church,
jumped off the Tobin Bridge in Boston after this economy cost his job, pension, savings.
Off a bridge?! That’s HILARIOUS!
Your alias made me burst out laughing in the middle of work.
Follow them, cretin.
funny . i like the whole woot concept of just selling one item.
Made Me laugh! And they have a great ceramic heater today. Anyone offended by this add is WAY to serious.
It is quite funny but somewhat poignant and disturbing. Of course this is a wonderful campaign but some ethics should prevail. Sometimes it feels good to laugh at dramatic things but there must always be some limits as with most things in this life. Surely at Woot’s no one will have to jump off the window, yet.
OK, I’ll bite. Which (or who’s) ethics should prevail?
Funny if you only get that ad in very specific contexts.
Not necessarily funny if this ad is displayed while somebody searches on suicide, killing themselves, depression, death, or anything else that a literal machine might think to correlate between the ad text and a person’s search context.
Looks like I’ll be the one to point you to Google’s own description (and Wikipedia’s) of what AdWords are and how they work.
not at all offensive… creative ad IMO.
not funny AND probably offensive to people that are going through hard times
If you are searching for the Google stock price, where these ads are targetted (amongst others), chances are you are better off than most. So yes, funny.
Normally I’d probably say funny, but take a look at this LA Times article “Father kills family and himself, despondent over financial losses”: http://www.lati...0,7425239.story That is not funny. Not only are people killing themselves, but murder/suicide is not funny (husband killed wife, mother-in-law and 3 sons, then himself).
Carp
The ad is a tongue in cheek piece of humor on those who’ve been driven to self harm by the economy. I don’t think it has any insensitive ties to a mass murderer with behaviorial issues. What he did wasn’t funny, but I don’t see how the ad even casually relates to an atypical mass murder case.
Cleaner gene pool. Good.
I’ll take 3.
+1!
Funny! Woot is the best ecommerce site, hands down.
Will these work with a mac?
I think it’s funny, despite my hatred of Woot. Okay, not hatred. I’m just not a fan right now after they scwed me out of a BOC.
News?
Palin.
Thanks to press like this Woot should see a nice healthy spike in traffic, so whether it’s offensive or not is beside the point now because it’s effective.
Hilarious. Good on them for creativity.
I know of a guy who bought from woot right before he jumped out of the window.
Funny, not news.
Wheres My Bag of Crap …..it probably contains a parcel of Lehman Brothers stock
FUNNY! Great advertising…
I’m no marketer, but I’m going to guess that in marketing campaigns, it is usually not a good idea to remind your customers of how poor they are. Just sayin’.
pure genius
Funny.
Good humor. Bad taste. Completely linkbait.
Woot is tongue and cheek like the Onion. The sky is blue, and water is wet.
I agree with Wall St Leech
Not funny or offensive. Just plain dumb. Who would want to spend whatever few dollars they have left before they kill themselves? You people are waaaaay too unquestioning and accepting. If I wrote copy this completely dumb on my blog would you read it? And share it and repost it and blather on about it like it was the best thing since Wonder Bread? Jesus Christ.
The screenshot shows personalized search results. Doesnt matter in this case, but the proper way to document a serp is to disable personalized results.
its funny indeed.
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Uhm, how is this wrong exactly? The people who got themselves into bad mortgages or bought overpriced Google or Apple stocks only have themselves to blame.
Well, at least they didn’t say:
“Before you blow the heads off your wife, mother-in-law and 3 sons give them a chance to get a great deal on helmets at Woot!“
Woot.com has been targeting users searching for Google Stock info for quite some time now… this is by no means their first Adwords campaign for the Goog or “google stock” keywords. Heck, less than two months ago they had ads that were a little more positive (back when the stock was doing just a wee bit better):
———–
Filthy Rich? We’ll help
Throw away your newfound cash
at Woot. You’re Welcome
woot.com
————
More on their old SEM campaigns, their very strange relationship with Google and woot.com’s entire current keyword/ad-copy campaign (with screenshots) here:
http://www.bren...-sly-marketing/
BTW, they’re not the only ones going after users looking at fallen stock prices… you’d be very surprised to see who their competition is..
-brent
I don’t believe the story that “I have lost everything on google or yahoo or whatever stock” who is that stupid to mortgage the house or put his last money on stock, you should not put in the stock market more then you can afford to lose, if you do otherwise then you deserve your fait if you can’t learn from the past crashes, stupids …
I agree with Marah.
Brilliant marketing…
Brilliant advertising. If you make the situation too serious you will make the leap.
haha so funny. no one in their right mind should jump out the window over this mess. money is just money but you can’t put a price on humor. lol
Not Funny. My girlfriend works at a hospital and they ave been seeing a lot of retirement aged people overdosing the last few days. This down turn is the worst of our generation, and suicide is a real by product of it. Some things should not be joked about, and this is one of them.
The entire economy and probably society is going to hell in a hand basket faster than you can say “sure, I’ll pay it back.”
We may as well laugh about it, because the alternative will only keep the tissue companies in business.