In a marketing move that was as slyly clever as it was infuriating, Chinese sneaker manufacturer Kaiwei Ni created an ad within Instagram Stories that appeared to have a stray hair onscreen. The goal, of course, was to trick users into swiping up to go to its website, where it was hosting a Black Friday sale for Yeezys.
The ad was first spotted on the r/mildlyinfuriating subreddit, according to The Verge, and then shared on Twitter by the user Blake Robbins, who grumbled that “someone needs to stop these growth hackers.” Instagram apparently concurred. A company spokesperson told The Verge
that, “This ad violated Instagram’s policies and was removed from future delivery in Stories several weeks ago. We also disabled the account from advertising on the platform again.”Instagram first deployed ads within Stories in January, and then added the ability to swipe up to learn more or to take a specific action several weeks later.
Check out the Kaiwei Ni ad in question below:
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