Does badvertising sell?

As painful as it is, I’m contemplating an issue I never thought I would.

Can bad advertising (or “badvertising” as we coined it back in college) be a good strategy? After all, if people are talking about the brand, if a bad jingle is memorable, if I’m including a link to one of the worst ads in recent memory in this blog, does it ultimately prove that badvertising works?

The spot drawing my ire is actually one the company brought back. Subway's Five... Five Dollar Footlong, which almost caused me to contemplate pulling a Van Gogh two years ago, is back. Much to my dismay.

The spots are horrible. There's damn little creativity involved. Just a jingle which sticks with the unsuspecting victim. The spots are in heavy rotation during the baseball playoffs, as part of Subway's Anytober Promotion.

I can't wait for Halloween. And I hate Halloween.

The first commercial that sparked the badvertising debate played repeatedly during early round NCAA tournament games. It was overdone. It was poorly acted. Though the song was terrible, it was infectious.

Kinda like the plague, but without all the death.

If you haven’t figured out which spot it is, you don’t watch much basketball. If you do, I don’t know how you missed it.

During our discussion, not one person said they liked it. In fact, the level of hatred spewed by everyone involved in the conversation led me to believe it was money badly spent. A quick cruise around Twitter proved it.

I mean, someone had to green-light the spot without thinking, “This is the best spot that we could produce.” Someone had to go out of their way to produce a memorably bad spot. That had to be the goal. It had to be strategy. Right?

I think no one would purposefully produce a horrible commercial, with a more horrible jingle. (I certainly wouldn’t.) It just isn’t effective. Or so I thought until a few admitted to having the song stuck in their heads.

Which leads to my conundrum: If you remember the jingle, and more importantly, the brand, does that mean the ad is effective?

I don’t think so. But I think that’s the risk when your goal is to create badvertising: losing customers. I didn't eat Pringles for years because of their ads. The question remains: Will someone avoid a brand simply because the commercials are bad?

Or just me?