Before we head back to 1992 and start making fun of some terrible Game Boy advertisements, I figured it would be fun to take a look at a commercial that can be found in current video game magazines. This is the new advertisement for the ESPN Video Game website, a sub-section of the ESPN site that is part of the 1up network (the same people that bring us Electronic Gaming Monthly and the Official PlayStation Magazine). Compared to the rest of the adverts we look at this ESPN commercial probably looks pretty good, but if you look closer you will notice that it's yet another laughably bad commercial worthy of mention in Commercial Break.

I'm not a big sports guy, I'm the kind of person that would rather play video games and watch movies while the rest of my sex are huddled around the TV watching some football game. But I know stupid sports advertising when I see it. In this commercial we are privy to a snapshot of the brand new look of the ESPN video game website. Along with the site we see descriptions of the various parts of the site with lines showing you where they are. It's important that if you are going to advertise your website, the person doing the advertising should actually know what they are talking about ... and this commercial clearly doesn't know what it's talking about.

Don't believe me? Take a look at where "Reviews" is pointing to. Following the line only brings you to the Headlines section, which only has the news on current video games, not the reviews. And the "News" section? That's pointing to a picture of a football player, which is clearly the featured story section (where they offer large, multi-page features people would be the most interested in). What about "Cheats"? Sadly that arrow appears to point to the a section that says "Best Reviewed". And I'm not entirely sure what the "Simulations" arrow is pointing to, it just looks like a football player on a bicycle to me. Whatever it is I can tell you right now that it has nothing to do with "Simulation". The only section that actually points to the right thing is the "Video Podcasts", but by this time does it really matter? This advertisement may be brought to you by "The Worldwide Leader in Sports" ... too bad they aren't the worldwide leader in actually knowing the layout of their own website!

FROM: Daisy Does Bad Advertising