Every year around this time, a friend of mine sends me a certain YouTube video. This is not a very nice video, since it slanders the Easter Bunny. Nor is it for the faint of heart. Do not watch it unless you want your mental image of the Easter Bunny shattered.

What it represents, however, is an extremely effective “negative ad”. When politicians “go negative” and run “negative ads”, this is probably the gold standard against which they measure their efforts:

So I watched this negative ad last night. And today the Brain family is getting some stuff at the neighborhood Wal-mart. I turn around and suddenly I am face to face with the Easter Bunny. And what ran through my head for a split second was, “Crap! It’s the Easter Bunny! Don’t hurt me!” It was brief, but it is no joke that it happened. That video had actually affected the way I viewed the Easter Bunny in the “real world”.

Fortunately this was a friendly EB, and he/she offered the kids candy and even stopped for a photo op:

The moral of this story: Negative ads work. They do affect perceptions.

The other moral: It pays to learn self-defense

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