Tyler Malin

I recently took a peek at the new Facebook features and was pleasantly surprised by the more visually appealing and intuitive display.  “Cool Facebook, maybe your quick and useful response to google+ will win me back”, I thought. 

Then, I did some digging and came across a mashable article which included the marketing video for the new features from facebook:

Immediately I recognized it as a thematic ripoff of the Google Chrome “Dear Sophie” campaign (which was so effective that I immediately signed my 4 year old and 1 month old up for gmail accounts and began sending photos, videos and daily thoughts).

While it is comforting to know that despite my advanced age, I am still clearly a target market for these services, I can’t help but take away cool points from Facebook on the blatant ripoff. And yes, I know it isn’t fair to judge a robust social networking revamp by it’s poor choice of marketing and promotion, but I make videos for brands for a living, and I can’t help it :) 

Have you seen other examples of products or services that have too closely mimicked their competitor’s advertising?  Have you seen an ad that is just so bad you can’t deal?  If so, hit me up or tweet em’ out using the #adfail hash tag.