An urban myth maintains that an ad for a vacuum cleaner from Electrolux,
”Nothing sucks like Electrolux”, caused some commotion in the USA, where it was seen as a failed campaign due to a translation error. Suck is colloquial English for being bad. However, the campaign was never launched in the USA.

The Swedish vacuum manufacturer had engaged the British agency Cogent Elliot to create the ad for the UK market in the 1960s. According to a Cogent Elliot employee, the pun ”was entirely intended as a double entendre. You know, make ’em smile…”.

So, against popular belief, the ad was not a marketing blunder but an ingenious way to create interest in a product.

The founder of Electrolux, Axel Wenner-Gren, was a marketing genius with unconventional sales ideas.

Electrolux published a short film showing an elephant crushing crisps which were all then sucked up by an Electrolux vacuum cleaner.

Electrolux had cars made that looked like big vacuum cleaners. The cars were based on a Citroën chassis.