True confession time: there’s a lot of bad ads in the world. In fact the majority of advertising is bad. But advertising isn’t unique in this. In any industry, it’s the minority of companies that are the best, producing the best product or service. Whether you’re a car manufacturer, a music artist, a clothing retailer, or an ad agency. Why is it that excellence is in short supply? Because it’s easy to be mediocre; to something bad. It’s much harder to create advertising that stands apart. Before you can create truly good advertising, it’s important to understand how ads can go bad.

In this section, we’ll look at some bad ads and dissect what went wrong – starting with the number 1 way ads of every kind of ad can go wrong.