When I first saw the once famous, now partially infamous GoldieBlox ad, I was ready to go out and buy the product – engineering toys designed to pique the interest of girls – and thousands of parents did. The original YouTube video of the ad had over 8 million views. The following video is the only one I could find due to a sticky copyright situation with the Beastie Boys (more on that later).

It is effective advertising to say the least. As a part of the target audience, I can say confidently that this is THE best ad for a girls’ toy I have ever seen, and I immediately wanted to get it for my 4-year-old daughter.

There are two reasons the ad works so well.

1. It taps into a desire among many Gen X and Gen Y women that their daughters grow into smart, strong women who want to use their brains even more than their beauty.
2. It cleverly takes a song by the Beastie Boys that, despite its chauvinistic lyrics, was wildly popular among the target audience (myself included – The Beasties are one of my favorite bands of all time), and turns it on its head.

In short, this is a genius marketing strategy. I would compliment the ad agency who created it, but it wasn’t created by an agency. It was actually the brainchild of the CEO, an engineer with a marketing background. But not enough of a marketing background to know that using even a re-created version of a popular song to sell anything violates copyright laws. She used the Beastie Boys song without getting permission, and get this, preemptively sued my favorite obnoxious rap trio (RIP Yauch) before they could have the chance to act, a page apparently stolen from the Robin Thicke playbook.

But interestingly enough, it’s not the Beastie Boys controversy that stopped me from buying GoldieBlox. It’s the reviews. As soon as I saw the video, I posted it up on Facebook. A science-loving, early-adopting friend of mine, who I expected to have high praise for GoldieBlox, did the exact opposite. “I wish the product were as good as the ad,” she wrote., and then proceeded to tell me why. And there were similar sentiments from others on Facebook. You can get a taste of it from the Amazon review below:

And while the majority of the reviews are positive, the negative ones are really, really negative. They have merit. And that is the sign of a bad brand. I think Debbie Sterling, the creator of GoldieBlox, has great overall ideas and intentions, so I don’t want to knock her. What she is trying to accomplish is admirable and worthy of praise. Her big picture marketing strategy was spot-on. Now she needs to make the appropriate tweaks to her product and brand to make it live up to the amazing ad – and subsequent buzz – she created. And maybe refrain from messing with the hip-hop community.

By the way, they pulled the song from the ad today, and you can see why it simply doesn’t work: