15 Insanely Terrible Advertising Campaigns You Won't Believe Are Real

As a mattress company, what do you want consumers to think of when they see your product? Comfort? A good night's sleep? Reliability? Al-Qaeda? Kurl-On Mattresses decided to go with that last one, producing this horrifying print ad which shows a young girl being shot point blank in the face, falling down covered in blood, landing on a mattress and bouncing back up.

To make matters worse, it isn't just some girl; the ad is calling to mind Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by a Taliban extremist when she was 14 years old. She made a full recovery, became an activist for the right to education, and is the youngest Nobel Prize laureate in history. Ogilvy & Mather, the firm that produced to ad, was going for the idea of "bouncing back" the way Malala did, but maybe they could have picked an image other than a child being shot, especially when it's an actual person. Is there any greater sign of disrespect than using the worst moment in someone's life as a way to sell products?

The company said in a statement that they'd be investigating how their standards were compromised, which makes it sound like they were hacked by a prankster when in reality this idea had to have passed through multiple levels of approval.