You gotta take Mercury off your list…

A lesson in bad advertising.

Another car brand is on the chopping block. Ford has announced that it intends to discontinue the venerable Mercury brand.  Mercury’s recent ad campaign—a bad one—didn’t help the cause.  My apologies to Jill Wagner…it really wasn’t your fault.  Instead, a weak value proposition and bad execution did in the campaign.

You gotta put Mercury on your list? Their entire campaign was built around the premise of asking (almost begging) you to just consider their product in your selection set. Hardly instills confidence. That’s like a high school junior (let’s call him Paul P.) going up to a senior girl that he likes and saying, “Hey, this Friday when you’re thinking about guys that you’d like to spend some time with over the weekend, I hope you’ll consider giving me a call.” Two words: dead end. Trust me, I know.

Too bad, because Mercury has done it right before. Here Farrah shows the right way to do it. Better ad = better results. This Cougar XR-7 model went on to set sales records.