Betabrand Joins Dove in Gleefully Lying About Its Products in These ‘Alternative Facts’ Ads

“Alternative facts.” The new term coined by our current presidential administration nine days ago has been repeated in headlines, tweets—and most recently, ads like this one from Dove.

Retailer Betabrand has launched a new “Alternative Facts” campaign online and on billboards in the San Francisco area. Each ad boasts an outrageous claim with the tagline, “Now you can say anything.” The ads launched around the same time as that two-page print ad that Dove released in the U.K. giving “alternative facts” about its new antiperspirant.

Among Betabrand’s claims:

“Our pants are so comfy, Eliza grew more legs to enjoy them twice as much.”
“We’re now bigger than Gap and Levi’s combined.”

Check out some of the ads here:

Interesting to note: Some of the ads don’t have the “Alternative Facts” header and aren’t incredibly intuitive without it.

“We were wondering what would happen if our president’s fondness for alternative facts and truthful hyperbole became the language of the land,” Betabrand CEO Chris Lindland tells AdFreak. “Surely marketers could then claim anything. So we started batting around ad ideas and found it very liberating to be unencumbered by veracity.”

The images on Facebook are getting mixed reviews. Some people love them (“Good advertising LOL”). Some people don’t get it (“You guys know you’re not even close to being as big as Levi’s or Gap … you know that right?”). And as expected, some people hate the dig at the current administration, although—as with the Dove ad—Betabrand doesn’t call out Trump, Conway or Spicer by name.

Roo Ciambriello

@roociambriello

Roo Ciambriello is a copywriter based in New Haven, Connecticut, and has been a contributor to Adweek since 2013.