Over the past few weeks my ventures down into the subway have left me scratching my head, raising my eyebrows at Diesel’s new BE STUPID campaign. Let me preface this by giving you a few examples of what I’ve seen the most:

I get that Diesel has always been into this idea of challenging its consumers to be bold and confident…but stupid? When has stupid ever been something we want to aspire to be? It felt like a stretch for Diesel to try to convince its target market that putting yourself in idiotic situations is stupid but cool. The humor in most of the outdoor advertisements I saw was more on the slapstick side and not so much in the realm of witty and amusing, where I think it would have done better.

I found myself shaking my head at nearly every one of these posters I walked past, and I couldn’t resist googling the campaign to see how well it was doing. It wasn’t until I went on the Diesel website that I came across the video the BE STUPID campaign is centered around:

Now this video, aside from being too text heavy, actually makes for a pretty decent campaign. It succeeds in getting the message across: we can’t be afraid of being or looking stupid…we have to just go for it. It’s along the lines of what Diesel has always tried to emphasize: to be less inhibited and live for the thrill and excitement of life.

What does make this campaign really stupid is the fact that this whole extra layer of meaning is lost when they try to cram the entire concept into just a few lines of text on top of a lame picture. I feel like Diesel is almost trying to imitate Dentyne Ice’s “Make Face Time” campaign.  I thought “Make Face Time” was pretty brilliant, though ultimately it got stopped because it didn’t really increase sales. The point is, at least Dentyne Ice successfully created something poignant and meaningful that made me pause and think for a moment…whereas Diesel just made me raise my eyebrows.

However, Diesel does have a few ads that do a decent job of capturing the idea:

But for some reason, I haven’t seen any of those around the subway lines I frequent. I found them only when I clicked through the campaign on the Diesel website. The three I posted first, the extra stupid ones? I’ve seen them all over the place, over and over again. Where do they put the posters that are actually good, and why didn’t the crappy versions get cut?  I understand the advantages of having more variety in a series of ads, but seriously, Diesel? You would probably make a much better impression if you at least dropped the stupid ones.

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