In the world of marketing it is of course the goal of a company for their ads to be as successful as possible, but what happens when the ad is too successful? Take H&M for instance; in 2003 they set up an ad campaign in hopes of exposing their new bikini line in Germany. Their advertisement idea was simple; just plaster posters of supermodel Heidi Klum all over the country wearing their sexy new bikini.

The ad worked better than anyone imagined. Within hours all 750 posters had been stolen, and display cases had even been smashed by people trying to get them. Their entire ad campaign had been stolen. Rather than scrap the entire ad campaign they had already paid for, H&M decided to do some problem solving instead. H&M managed to incorporate the posters popularity in a manner that worked in their favor. They decided to give out the posters for free and bikini sales soared. H&M expressed a newfangled approach to a problem by embracing it rather than trying to fight against it. By embracing their initial problem, they were still able to make major profits off of what initially could have been seen as a marketing failure.

(Terry O’Reily. Charlie Bit My Ad: When Ads Perform Too Well. CBC Radio. Published April 14, 2012. http://www.cbc.ca/undertheinfluence/season-1/2012/04/14/charlie-bit-my-ad-when-ads-perform-too-well-1/)