VQA stinks it up in ad-land

Jon sent me an interesting email, which I liked so much I decided to use it as a post:

Classical 96.3 is running a series of ads for VQA. The voice asks if you "VQA" and goes on to say that "lots of people do. Behind closed doors. At night. Not that there's anything wrong with that. As long as it happens between consenting adults." And so on. Essentially, it's a refined version of the Monty Python "I bet you do" skit — in fact, one of the commercials ends with "I bet you do."

The point is to get you to hit this weebsite: http://www.doyouvqa.ca.

Way to cheapen the brand, guys.

To me, VQA now stands for "Lowest Common Denominator"

And if that wasn't bad enough, he added the following to the original email:

Found a form! Sent the following!

Heard your radio commercial this morning and thought "Crickey, what a way to cheapen the brand." How about taking a page from Mercedes Benz and referring to VQA wines as "nasty?" To me, VQA is now just an acronym for "lowest common denominator." Way to go. Ah, but you're saying "But the ad worked! You visited the website!" But am I going to buy a VQA wine? No. Does the VQA marque mean to me now what you want it to mean to the consumer? No. Do I expect to see ads for a VQA box o'wine at Wal-Mart? With an advertising campaign like this, yes — I figure that you're heading in that direction. Good luck with that.

Cross-posted to Ontario Wine Blog.