UPDATE: The link below for the rejected ads will now only go to the “approved” ads. It looks as though the ads in question are no longer on the site. You could try to find them in a Google cached page, or on some mirror, if you like. I guess the lawyers must have thought it wasn’t a good idea to leave them up…
No, Sun Microsystems is not advertising on my site (though if you think it’s a good idea, you can let them know). To the right is one of the “rejected” ads which Sun wanted to run in some major publications. You can see the rest of their rejected attempts here.
They invite suggestions for more “contrarian” ad headlines to be sent to this email address.
Is this marketing? Sure it is. Marketing is creating awareness, as my wife (who is studying advertising) reminded me the other day. Sure, you could argue (I did) that the purpose for creating awareness is to create sales… well, it is. But nonetheless, you can’t “create sales” with an advertising or marketing campaign; you can only create awareness. What you hope is that you are creating the type of awareness which will result in an increase in sales.
So the question becomes, is this going to create the type of awareness that also creates sales?
I’ll leave that for someone else to answer, but at the very least, Sun just became a little less boring.
