DreADful

I found these ads in Southeast Asia Globe magazine, a fairly interesting locally produced mag about regional and international topics. The photography and production of the magazine are excellent, the quality of the ads in it not so much. There has been a lot of improvement in the quality of ads in Cambodia over the last few years, with both local and foreign agencies raising the standards. There are however still a lot of companies and organisations who are not convinced of the value of a good marketing strategy, or who try to do everything in-house on the cheap. The results are often textbook examples of everything that can be wrong with an ad.

This CityLink one is bad on so many levels:
So many colors, so many elements…
That boy looks so like a successful business exec. Is the girl in NYC floating yogi-style?
The English is just ridiculous: “Family Calling Free Everyday”?! “Call to the globe easily”? “The Best SoIP We Can Trust”? Who’s “we”? What’s “SoIP”? Is it the best, or can we trust it?
Over 200 countries? Wikipedia lists only 193 countries – I assume they’re counting Somaliland, Taiwan, Transnistria and other “countries” too.
What’s CityLink’s motto? Is it “Your Obvious Choice”, or “The Best Internet Service Provider”?
Why do they have two different websites: citylink.com.kh vs. citylinktelecom.com.kh?
What’s with the lousy punctuation in the address?
And worst of all: they managed to misspell the product name “cTIyPhone”!
How embarrassing.

The ad on the opposite page looked much more professional … until I took a closer look at the globe. Huh? What planet’s that? Wait a minute… It’s our Earth, mirrored!

A classic photoshop mistake, mirroring items you shouldn’t. People wearing clothes with mirrored logos or text, cars with mirrored license plates, mirrored worlds: it looks unprofessional.