Bad Luck Brian Ad and Self Regulation

One of the Slovak advertising agencies has chosen a peculiar approach to advertising by using the well-known Bad Luck Brian meme in a campaign for its client - an orthodontic clinic. This campaign led to wild discussions of experts and enthusiasts from advertising practice about copyright protection in advertising.

The campaign was launched with a billboard featuring the Bad Luck Brian meme and the following text: “With invisible braces, there are no such memories.”

The advertising agency then (via their friend) intentionally placed a photo of the billboard to a Facebook group of marketers, copywriters, and SEO optimizers with a caption: “Do you think they understand the difference between using a photo in a meme and advertising?” as a part of advertising strategy …

… and it worked. The discussion was real and passionate. The agency was quickly accused of a flagrant breach of the copyright and privacy rights of the main protagonist.

Eventually, however, the agency came up with a surprise - a video of the famous Bad Luck Brian himself confirming that he was the official face of the campaign.

This campaign has shown two things. First, sometimes an advertising campaign can promote the agency more than its client. And second, even more interesting, self-regulation is really an effective tool in the advertising industry! If you break the rules (in this case pretend to break the rules), your competitors will eat you up alive.

You can find the agency's case study to the Ad on the following link.