39 Weirdest Ad & Branding Campaigns You’ll Find Funny

Japan's love of salmon as a sushi staple is a result of a successful Norwegian marketing campaign in 1986. Raw salmon sushi wasn’t consumed in Japan before that because the Pacific salmon had parasites.

In 2012, the advertising campaign for a UK energy drink called "Pussy" was banned as sexually explicit and offensive. Pussy energy drink ad slogan was: "The drink's pure, it's your mind that's the problem."

Fiji Water once ran an ad campaign stating "The label says Fiji because it's not bottled in Cleveland". The city of Cleaveland responded by testing both Fiji water and their own tap water. They found 6.3 micrograms of arsenic in Fiji water, and none on their own.

We pair orange juice with breakfast due to a marketing campaign by Albert Lasker (known for Lucky Strike) to save the struggling citrus industry. He convinced American housewives not only to buy oranges, but to make juice with them by hand, and to buy the juicers needed to make it.

In the 1980s, Dominos Pizza had a campaign centered around "The Noid". It was discontinued in 1989 after a mentally ill man named Kenneth Noid took Dominos Pizza workers hostage after he thought the ads were a personal attack on him.

In 2012, Dunkin’ Donuts launched an ad campaign in Seoul, Korea where scent spray devices installed on buses would release a fragrant coffee aroma when triggered by the sound of the DD radio jingle. The campaign reached more than 350,000 people, and sales near the bus stop increased by 29%.

The diamond engagement ring fever was invented by an ad campaign in the 1930s. Before that few Americans proposed with the precious stone, and the price of diamond was falling.

In 2006, M&Ms created an ad campaign offering 2 million dark chocolate M&Ms for the one who returns "The Scream" (a famous painting that was stolen just two years prior in Norway). Just days after the campaign, the painting was found by the Norwegian Police.

In 2009, Burger King launched a campaign that if you unfriended 10 friends on Facebook you were entitled to a free whopper. The ex-friend would receive a message explaining that their friendship was less valuable than a whopper.

Breakfast wasn’t regarded as the most important meal of the day until an aggressive marketing campaign by General Mills in 1944. They would hand out leaflets to grocery store shoppers urging them to eat breakfast, while similar ads would play on the radio.