Do Screaming Bus Stops = Sales?

From time to time, an annoying advert or jingle can be beneficial for a brand, but it's an extremely fine line between an endearingly irritating, yet catchy song ('we buy any car, we buy any car...') and something so bad it makes everyone hate your product.

If anyone's seen the advertisement currently festooned across a certain Cross Street bus stop, just outside Boots, they know what I'm talking about. The advert that seems to periodically scream its brand name; or perhaps it senses when people are looking at it? Either way it's a horrendous idea.

Imagine - for this advert to have been approved, several things must (perhaps in some parallel universe where logic is inverted) have happened:

1. An employee of the firm responsible for this monstrosity has come up with the idea, and been sufficiently impressed with their advertising nouse to forward it to their manager.
2. The manager has said to their employee, "You know what, you might be on to something there."
3. The manager and the employee have pitched their idea to the client, who shall remain nameless, and the client has said, "Good idea guys, let's do it!"
4. The whole motley crew has paid ridiculous sums of money to have the advert installed in bus stops.
   
5. They've all sat back and felt satisfied.

And what have they achieved? Everyone (surely) hates the advert, hates the product and will probably avoid it in shops for the rest of their life.

Whilst this obnoxious advertisement does make people take notice, it doesn't make them take notice in anything like a good way. Both the brand name and the actual nature of the product have come second to the 'concept', and are subsequently difficult to make out - I am still unsure exactly what the advert is for.

This kind of advertising, believe it or not, is actually founded on a sensible idea. Make your advertising slightly annoying, slightly obnoxious, and people will take notice. They may not like it at first, but it will quickly become a talking point (see: this blog post, although I haven't mentioned the brand itself) - it's the adage: "any publicity is good publicity."

The problem is, when a company produces a small-minded interpretation of the aforementioned idea, all they achieve is mass annoyance and subsequent brand-death.

And if anyone thinks these bus stop adverts are a good idea, please, please explain to me why using the comments box, and I'll try and get my head round it.