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Advertising Age covers Sephora's coffee cup lipstick smear ad (reg. req.) and raises an interesting question.

Is marketing becoming so competitive and cluttered that we're willing to risk pissing off our target customers while getting our message to them?

On one hand, the ad surprises consumers and follows a line of unique coffee-related advertising we've discussed before. It's creative and gets your attention.

But how many people drinking the coffee are Sephora's target customers? It's a mass approach which will initially confuse more than a few people before they've had their morning cuppa.

It reminds me of the Orkin television spot (circa 2000) where a bug crawls across the TV screen during a parody ad. It was so realistic there were reports of consumers breaking their TV sets trying to kill the bug.

Maybe the people with broken TV sets need to switch to decaf, butwtf?! How bad is it getting? As the effectiveness of traditional media wanes is our reluctance towards pissing off consumers deteriorating with it?

Maybe it's just me and I need another cuppa?

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Kevin Dugan is the author of the popular Strategic Public Relations blog. Kevin is Director of Marketing Communications for FRCH Design Worldwide.
Visit Kevin's blog: Strategic Public Relations.