Here at Overthinking It, we’ve been talking about a disturbing trend in advertising for several years. We saw several (nine, to be exact) instances of this in last Saturday’s Super Bowl. Here’s an example:

Advertiser: Doritos

Message: “Eating Doritos will get you shocked by a dog.”

Huh? Why is this a good thing? How is this supposed to sell Doritos? Well, we’re not really sure, but we’ve coined a phrase that aptly describes this perplexing phenomenon:

“Bad Things Happen To You When You Use Our Product.”

Let’s explore this trend further with some more examples.