It's that time of the year again. The world of brands and advertising moved full throttle all through the year with heaps of trashy, some half-decent, and some rare good work.

To kick off the annual review here at The Desi Design, we present the year 2014 in all its uninspired, abysmal and atrocious brands glory. Here are the 14 Worst Brand Happenings of 2014!

14. Tapal Green Tea

Green Tea invigorates, soothes, ans inspires. This ad does none of those. Boring and unimaginative. Oh and while we're at it, the packaging is so bad! Especially that typography.

 

13. Goodmilk

One would think that Goodmilk would put some fresh effort into its relaunch nearly a decade after it first appeared on the market. But one would be wrong. Lazily rehashing the old jingle and lumping on some trite shots is not a bad move, Goodmilk.

 

12. Tarang

It wouldn't have been so bad had it not been for how blatantly Tarang insults our intelligence. It puts up a desi drama of load-shedding/Chai/Mian-Biwi stuff right in the midst of a Turkish town, with little effort to even make it pass for a local location. Ali Zafar, bad music, and atrocious dancing only add to the agony.

 

11. Olper's Ramzan

With a rich history of Ramzan-themed campaigns, we have high hopes of Olper's. Sadly this year's work does not live upto the expectations. It falls way short with a clumsy idea, odd choice of endorsers and boring music.

 

10. Horlicks Moms

Moms so menacing you wouldn't wish them on your worst enemies.

 

9. Chilli Milli

A sorry attempt at emulating the breakthrough Servis campaign from a couple years ago, this Chilli Milli ad suffers from a trashy jingle and cheap concept.

 

8. Lipton

This is all over the place. No context, no concept, no redeeming quality. At all. Abysmal.

 

7. Warid LTE

After being ridiculed to no end for being the sad loser network with no high-speed internet, Warid needed all the redemption it could possibly manage to get some respect back. With their LTE launch, Warid had a great opportunity to carve a decent place for itself. Sadly, this opportunity was lost to this lackluster and unimaginative communication.

 

6. Molty Foam

Creepy, perverted and absurd (with no positive connotations whatsoever) are the best adjectives to describe this. An idea – actually, brain fart – that should have never left the person's mind, let alone made into an actual ad.

 

5. Hilal Kake

This production of epic proportions tries to do with Kake what Cadbury did with Dairy Milk: position the product as a replacement/competitor to long-established traditional sweets. The difference? Where Dairy Milk succeeded with great conceptualization and execution, Kake falls flat in its forced, unnatural situations.

 

4. Tulsi

Tulsi's attempt at premiumizing itself with snazzy visuals and A-list celebrities (yeah, these guys are the best we have, man!), along with ridiculous product use-case situations (walking the red carpet at your movie premiere, really?) is a sure-shot disaster.

 

3. Safeguard

The overload of patriotism and presence of just too many vocal chords are the main highlights of this cringe-worthy ad.

 

2. Kashmir Banaspati

This Mahira Khan-starring epic falls nicely into the sooo-bad-it's-good category. The atrocious special effects, over the top acting and laughable script all work together in jaw-dropping harmony to produce one heck of a piece of branded communication.

 

1. Zubaida Apa Whitening Soap

This is outrageous at so many different fronts that its not even worth discussing this abomination. Just the fact that it resides at the bottom of this year's list – or of perhaps all eternity – makes its place clear.

So this is it folks! The worst of the worst from this year's crop. Stay tuned for out Best of 2014 list!