Whiffing on O2's Be More Dog
- Summary:
- Viz is slow out the gate but now takes a comic look at O2's Be More Dog campaign with hilarious results. Only a telco could attract this kind of attention...or maybe a bank?
Today's contender is none other than telco O2, with its Be More Dog campaign.
Ever quick to pick up the whiff, Viz Comic is a year late in putting out this hilarious response on its Facebook page:
(see to the side)That in turn drew amusing comments like: 'Should have gone to their Barking branch.'
For our non-UK readers, Barking is a village right on the extreme end of the London Central Line tube system. If you ever go there then you'll understand why. (With apologies to anyone reading this who lives in Barking.)
A few interesting factoids. At the time of writing, this response has been liked 5,771 times, been shared 3,388 times and has drawn 118 comments. Be warned, some of the comments are far from safe for work.
The truly amazing part for me is that it has taken a comic as snarky as Viz so long to cotton on to a campaign that started this time last year as a response to Three's moonwalking pony advert. And if you don't think that was funny enough, it won at the Shorty Awards for best use of social media by a telco. Who says the industry isn't into navel gazing? Or that British humor is ummm...British?
Needless to say, O2 has not said a word, nada, zippo, zilch about the Viz response. Presumably it doesn't mind being ripped a new one by the more ribald parts of the interwebs, even if those same comedians are very late to the party.
But more seriously, O2's marketers clearly didn't think this through. Anything of this kind is bound to catch the eye of those with a tendency towards mischief (ahem,) however late in the day. That's especially the case when it comes to telcos which already have a (near) universal lousy reputation.
I guess the best one can say about this campaign is that it isn't called Be More Pussy. Now that really would have been bad news. '
Side note: speaking of telcos I had an extraordinary experience with Three recently. I needed to add minutes to my plan and didn't know how to deal with that from the phone. Go to the store and they'll help you out - right? Au contraire. They tell me to ring Three as they have no facility to do that kind of thing in store. Awesome.