Bad ads can sell good products if you do this…

SERIOUSLY, poorly conceived or even plagiarized advertisements can make good products go to greater heights. Well … as long as the product is at least good, if not exceptional in the eyes of the consumers or target market. No amount of bad publicity can put a good product down, not even the Philippines that released an advertisement about its tourism program that was allegedly copied by an ad agency from another commercial in South Africa.

Here’s one example: S&B Foods is a Japanese company that manufactures, sells and distributes a “dazzling variety of spices, condiments and cooking ingredients, including curry sauce mix, pasta sauce and Chinese food products,” according to its website. Founded in 1923, S&B curry powder in Japan and is known to have invented tube wasabi to help it conquer foreign markets.

Decades back, S&B bragged about changing the appearance of Mount Fuji. “It announced that it was going to use helicopters to scatter some of the yellow curry powder it produced onto Mount Fuji’s snow-white peak. The population would then see Mount Fuji with a golden summit. With this announcement, the com- of its curry powder,” according to Harro von Senger in “The 36 Stratagems for Business” (2006).

“The storm of indignation immediately broke loose,” says Senger (b.1944), a Swiss lawyer and a professor of Sinology at the University of Freiburg in Germany. S&B was heavily criticized, including by the mass media that activated the flame of hate. How could a company deface a national treasure like Mount Fuji?