We talk a lot about adhering to your target market through the creation of personas. But in an attempt to target their market segments some companies take a rather peculiar approach.

Early April, Robert Gorell of Grokdotcom posted an interesting article about Spirit airlines. In their attempt to promote their latest campaign, they ran a promotion with an edgy headline: “We’re Having a Threesome!”

Difficult to ignore the context that the word threesome comes in; I was appalled after reading the ad.

But most recently, I got my very own invitation from Spirit as well:

Sure, I can easily assume MILF truly stands for Many Islands Low Fares, but come on people! Who do they think we are? I have to give Spirit’s marketing team credit though, they caught my attention, but not in a good way.

So who is Spirit trying to appeal to? They’ve turned away many with their poor customer service, so are the ads helping them gain an edgier appeal to a certain segment of the market?

Another marketing initiative was presented to me via rap style on YouTube. Poplabs has a number of different “raps” posted on YouTube about conversion optimization etc. I found the videos entertaining as I laughed and laughed after watching it; but then I thought, what is the point of this? I don’t think a VP of marketing from a top 500 online retailer is going to say: “You know what, I think we’ll hire Poplabs for our conversion project, because DAMN they rap well!” Some of our team members liked the video and thought it was a good way to advertise and show creativity. But did Poplabs create the videos to advertise and market their services or just for SEO purposes and linkbacks?

Moral of the story: Make certain that every ad and marketing initiative is closely studied and targets specific market segments for a specific purpose and goal.