Nothing sucks like an ad myth
Oy vey. I've spotted it in a few Swedish blogs recently, and then to top it all off someone mentioned it at work - the old "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux" myth. It goes a little something like this and can be found on countless funny pages, in silly list emails, and spoken during water cooler chats in offices around the world.
Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign, "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux".
The funny of course being that Swedes are unaware of the double entendre.
Here is the mythical ad poster.
(originally posted in the comments for "both of these ads really suck")
So lets be clear, it was not an American ad, it was a British advertising poster, and the pun was intended. Look, the Electrolux sucks so hard it explains the leaning tower of Pisa.
The ad agency was Cogent Elliot - and this was one of the questions that had everyone stumped in the ad trivia game.
Sorry about the photocopy, but it's all I could get my hands on and many thanks to adlister Michiel who had this in his scrap book. The ad won some sort of UK ad award back in the early nineties, most likely 1991 though I don't know which one. Are there any adgrunts out there armed with a collection of old award books or otherwise clued in to more details about this ad, like names of creative who made it and such? I want to put this ad myth to death already - the nothing sucks like an electrolux ad was real but British. And don't let anyone tell you any different.
Snark Hunting even snarked about it when they read and article in the San Francisco Chronicle that "trot out the same old apocryphal tales of ad campaigns that got lost in translation."
What will it take to kill this myth?
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comments
- In actual fact amazing
10 min ago - What is the name of the song
2 days 6 hours ago - With this card, they're
2 days 11 hours ago - Haha as well as "Why is it?"
2 days 18 hours ago - This was all so much better
2 days 22 hours ago - This wasn't an Abercrombie
3 days 15 hours ago - This just makes me like
3 days 16 hours ago - Ha haha, the way he snogs the
3 days 21 hours ago - Speaking of cereal&feels,
3 days 22 hours ago - Fair enough. You're not a
4 days 14 hours ago
It irks me that journalists seem bent on spreading myths rather than reporting facts.
Thing is, it's easy to continue reporting a myth - by accident. Just say "according to [reputable paper who misreported to begin with]". Nobody wants to admit that on occasion, someone might get it wrong, yaknow? :)
Hmm... I was once friendly with a Swedish girl who went to work as an au pair for a member of the Hoover™ family in New York. I recall that they took great joy in telling her that Electrolux sucked as she was made to vacuum the carpets in their swanky mansion with a Hoover™.
We Americans can be so nationalistic! Imagine, vacuum cleaner wars with Sweden!
This advertising campaign was used in the UK during the 1960's - it was already known what "sucks" means in the US sense and they hoped the double entendre would gain attention. Unfortunately it didn't make the splash they hoped for ......
But this advert is no myth - it's real!!
Wow. I know that people don't read past the headline, but for fucks sake, at least try.
The ad itself wasn't a myth: however the idea that Electrolux did not know what sucks meant, and that it was a mistake made by a Swedish company who weren't all that familiar with English, is a myth. Also the part that the ad ran in the USA is a myth. The ad ran in the UK only, and the "sucks" pun is very much intentional.
Everyone clear on this now? If you've seen this Electrolux campaign in any US advertising media, please dig up a reliable source to support this assertion. By realieable I mean "not the San Francisco Chronicle", instead our tradepress, ad agency releases or award shows.
So, phrases like this one found in the International Business: Fourth Edition. Czinkota, Ronkainen and Moffett, Dryden Press, 1996 may have snowballed the idea that a US version existed, and that 'slang' somehow made the pun less funny in American English vs British English (to me it seems as if the author of this book didn't get the pun at all).
It's also interesting that you just dated the ad back to the 60s, when we've seen it win awards in 1991. So it ran with that line for twenty odd years before anyone bothered to award it something?
The problem with the ad is that it reinforced a commonly held (and not entirely unwarranted) belief that 'Lux vacuum cleaners weren't much cop. Working for a large department store group at the time even the Electrolux reps found this one very funny - and not in a good way. Add in the story going around at the time telling the story of a man and his appendage, a Hoover hand-held vacuum cleaner and the local casualty department and it was all bound to backfire. Not quite the Hoover free flight debacle (which almost killed off the brand - or at least sent into the arms of Candy), but a reasonable second.
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