A funny thing happened to SalesGenie’s Super Bowl commercial on its way to being named the worst ad of all time: apparently, it worked. For better or worse, they figured out what their target — lazy male salespeople — really wanted, presented their product as a way for those salespeople to get what they want, and then asked them to take action.
According to King Kaufman’s column on Salon, they needed 700 new subscribers to make their investment a break-even proposition. They got 10,000.