May 14, 2010

Macaw 90's Tire Add

Came across this Macaw mtb ad from 1994 recently. Macaw basically made shitty mtb tires but were the first to have tires in color, they were essentially the Sweetskinz of their time. I know it doesn't seem like a big deal now, but to my 14 year old mind color tires were amazing. This is semi famous add in poster form, and looking at it now it's hard to believe that any mtb magazine would actually print it. It's bordering on offensive, however the thing that I'm struggling with is that it was also incredibly memorable. If being memorable is a measure of success for advertising then this campaign succeeded in spades.
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Anytime I see any of the cheesecake ads today I always cringe a bit. Does anybody actually ever buy anything because they have hot chicks in the ads? I'm no prude and I like looking at hot chicks as much as the next person, but it always strikes me as totally lazy.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Didn't you just buy a "Ride Hard" poster because it had a hot girl on it? It's cool if it's art, but stupid, classless and lazy if it's an advertisement?

Chris said...

Pretty sure in 1994 I thought that was the best piece of advertising out there. Now I know better. I certainly remembered the brand of tires though.

Jeff said...

I know, such an odd dichotomy.

Anonymous said...

This ad is really offensive to me, thanks for calling it what it is- lazy. They could have at LEAST chosen some models with some jacked calf muscles and put them in some SIDIs or something.

If they really wanted to turn us on, wouldn't they have put the women on the bikes and had them RIDE? They did not because they are lazy.

And don't even get me started on the Ride Hard poster...

Jeff said...

for the record the "ride hard" poster has been put away not to be hung. It sat around in my basement looking up at me for a few weeks and eventually it got creepy.