Curious mistakes of world brands in PR campaigns. Failed advertising campaigns for Cadillac, Ford, PepsiCo and other major brands An example of a failed PR campaign
Marketers know what attracts us bright colours, a pleasant voice announcing the start of the promotion, and, of course, discounts. It seems that everything in advertising is thought out to the smallest detail, but it is not. Even large companies can screw up so badly that a mistake can cost them millions and even billions of dollars.
Apple and U2 album
In 2014, Apple decided that people would definitely like the new U2 album, so the company signed a contract with the group and automatically downloaded the album to all Apple devices. After all, everyone loves free stuff, Apple thought.
It's just that people love free stuff if they need it (at least a little bit). The album took up a lot of memory space and could not be deleted in any way, which, accordingly, few people liked. But also a big problem was that for Apple the album was not free. They spent $100 million on marketing alone, plus the same amount they paid U2. Later, Apple still allowed to delete songs from devices.
Weather Prediction by Walkers (Lay's)
In 2010, the British company Walkers Crisp (we know them as Lay's) decided to hold an unusual action: if a person bought a bag of chips for 40 pence (about 65 cents), then he could go to the site and try to predict when it would rain. If the prediction came true, then the buyer won ten pounds (about $16).
However, the problem was that the competition was held in England (where it is often cloudy) and in the fall. Therefore, it soon turned out to be such a rainy week that every prediction came true. In just this week, the Walkers have lost over a million pounds and have continued to lose money. But there is also a positive side: the advertising was a success and people remembered the brand name forever.
1.5 million balloons
On September 27, 1986, the American company United Way decided to break the record and launch 1.5 million balloons thus making itself known. In the city of Cleveland (USA), in a large hangar, 2,500 people inflated thousands of balloons with helium, and then the roof was opened and the balloons were released. It was a wonderful sight, but only for a few minutes.
No one took into account the rain that came at the time of launch. Balls instantly nailed to the ground, and the wind blew all over the city. As a result, all city transport stopped, the runway and the pier were closed.
It also resulted in the death of two boatmen who could not be found due to the fact that the balls were strewn all over the local lake. The wife of one of the victims sued the company for three million dollars. In addition, the company paid millions to the city to pay damages.
American Airlines and free flights for life
In 1981, American Airlines decided to provide an opportunity for wealthy customers to buy a subscription to unlimited flights. For $250,000, the client was entitled to an unlimited number of free first-class tickets. And for an additional 150 thousand, you could buy a subscription for your friend.
Marketers thought that only large companies would use the pass to transport their top managers, but everyone started buying subscriptions. So, one guy flew to London 16 times in one month. Why not? You can fly every day.
As a result, the company was forced to carry thousands of passengers for free and lost five million dollars in a week. Subscriptions were immediately canceled, and the money was returned to cardholders.
The biggest popsicle in the world
In 2005, Snapple (Dr Pepper's beverage company) decided to expand its product line to include ice cream. They came up with a grandiose advertising campaign: to make the world's largest ice cream and enter the Guinness Book of Records.
Eskimo weighing 17.5 tons was frozen at the factory and was supposed to be delivered to New York. Huge ice cream in the hottest season of the year in the middle of hot asphalt. What could go wrong?
When the ice cream was brought to the very center of the city and the truck was opened, waves of strawberry syrup poured out from there, covering everything in its path. As a result, the streets were closed for two days, and the company spent millions of dollars on damages and cleaning the streets.
Tesco and mathematics
In 2011, the British supermarket chain Tesco staged a price war with rival ASDA. Tesco said, "If you find the same item cheaper at ASDA, we'll refund you the difference." That is, if you bought wine in Tesco for $20, and then found the same wine in ASDA, but for $18, then Tesco will refund you two dollars.
The company assumed that customers would only buy what they needed. But resourceful people would buy whatever was cheaper at ASDA, get the difference, and then sell those things back. As a result, they received more than they spent. During the action, Tesco lost a colossal amount, which was never covered.
Oprah and KFC
In 2009, KFC decided to promote their new dish by giving it away for free. Wanting to maintain a low profile, KFC announced their offer to the show of the little-known (the company believed so) artist Oprah Winfrey. But underestimated the audience of Oprah and television.
So when viewers found out they could print a voucher for a free lunch at KFC, 16 million people did. And they came to KFC all over the country. Lunches ended within hours, and before the end of the action, the company lost $ 40 million and paid the same crazy amount to Oprah for advertising.
Olympics and McDonald's
In 1984, the venue Olympic Games chose the USA. In honor of this event, McDonald's launched a promotion with the slogan "If the US wins, you win!". For every medal the Americans won, visitors were given free meals. For the bronze medal - a glass of cola, for the silver - french fries, for the gold - Big Mac.
But the unexpected happened. In that year, the USSR (the main competitor of the USA) boycotted the Olympics. The Americans received 83 gold medals, 61 silver and 30 bronze. This is much more than expected. As a result, the "Olympic" action almost ruined McDonald's, as everyone ate for free.
Number Fever by Pepsi
In 1992, Pepsi lagged far behind Coca-Cola in Southeast Asia. Therefore, the Philippine management of Pepsi decided to launch a promotion called "Numbers Fever". The plan was simple: under the lids of Pepsi's drinks, there was a code and the amount of the winnings - from a thousand to a million pesos (40 thousand dollars at that time).
Money could be received only if at the end of the promotion they announced that your number was the winning one. When Pepsi announced the winner, who would get a million pesos, they made a mistake. The number 349 was chosen as the winner, but it was not supposed to be the winning one, because it was printed on 800,000 caps. That is, 800 thousand people won one million each (for all 800 billion pesos).
The company could not pay such an amount, so they referred to a computer failure, but this did not help. Riots broke out in the country's capital, burning trucks and Pepsi factories. As a result, three employees of the company were killed. Pepsi soon had to give away 250 million pesos - all of its income from the previous two years and the duration of the promotion.
May 31, 2018 Sergey
Ads That Wouldn't Be Better: The 10 Worst Campaigns of 2017, According to Business Insider. Racist antics and mockery of the victims of the terrorist attack - what other unsuccessful creativity discouraged brands last year?
10. Volkswagen: zero creativity
Volkswagen shot an ad in which a married couple with each new member of the family buys a more spacious Jetta or Atlas car. Let's put it simply: plus one child - plus a new car. It would seem that with the popularity of the brand, creativity should increase proportionally, but apparently not in this case.
9. Netflix tweet about 'The Christmas Prince'
Using Spotify's TV audience data, Netflix thought it could spin a quirky Twitter marketing campaign over the Christmas season with renewed vigor. "53 people who have watched The Christmas Prince every day for the past 18 days: Who hurt you?". Is this tweet likely to please the audience or motivate them to watch?
8. Endless Trolling Race by Verizon
This video was created by the American television company Verizon for a store called "Double Price", which shows that you need to pay for goods in accordance with the promoted name, that is, "twice as much."
7. Uber's price spike
2017 was quite unproductive for Uber - attacks from competitors did not bypass the company. Uber customer frustration peaked for the first time in January after the company tried to capitalize on an announced taxi strike in New York and set price pressure. Hours after the incident, the #DeleteUber hashtag garnered an unrealistic amount of copies, and people started deleting the app from their phones.
6. Banter over the tragedy from Adidas
“Congratulations, you survived the Boston Marathon!” - said in the text of the letter sent by Adidas to runners participating in the annual marathon. This congratulation was considered tactless, and it was immediately criticized by users who reminded the company of the victims of the explosions during this event in April 2013. After this incident, Adidas attempted to make amends by sending an apology email to recipients.
5. Tricky lure from Kaiewei Ni
Chinese sneaker manufacturer Kaiwei Ni has placed an advertising banner in the center of the smartphone screen with a picture of hair. Upon discovering them, users touched the display to remove the “hairy” splash screen, but were automatically taken to the sneaker brand’s website. The ad was quickly removed from Instagram as it violated the platform's policies. The tricky decoy was an uninteresting cheap trick that didn't work.
Advertising McDonald's and Leo Burnett U.K. has been criticized for focusing viewers on the problem of loss loved one. In the commercial, a mother informs her son that there was practically nothing in common between them and the deceased father. Only Filet-O-Fish at McDonald's, which the boy chooses for himself, makes the mother think that this dish unites their interests and there is still a connection between father and son.
3. NIVEA's "White is Purity" Campaign
In the Middle East, NIVEA's "White is Clean" campaign promoted deodorant that won't leave marks on clothes. Its slogan outraged many people who saw it as an expression of the clear superiority of the white race. A copywriter's mistake turned the advertising campaign against NIVEA.
A negative public reaction to advertising can lead to the disruption of global marketing projects and the loss of consumer confidence in the brand. The editors of the site selected companies that were forced to stop broadcasting videos and ads after criticizing the media and Internet users.
subway
Especially for Halloween in 2014, the fast food chain released a commercial that convinces viewers that they still need to keep fit, despite the end of the beach season, to fit into holiday costumes.
The heroine of the video demonstrates several options for Halloween clothes - a "daring teacher", a "pretty nurse", a "hot devil" and a Viking princess.
After launching the ad, Time and Today newspapers called it sexist, provoked an active discussion of the video on the network, which forced the company to remove the video from YouTube and stop the campaign.
Esurance
In the spring of 2014, the insurance company Esurance had to remove its advertising from billboards in the United States due to the wrong typeface and spacing in the slogan: "Cover your home in a click" read from afar as "Cover your home in a dick."
Cadillac
During the opening of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, which was broadcast in the US on NBC, Cadillac ran a TV ad featuring American actor Neil McDonough celebrating American values of hard work and luxury living. In contrast, he mentions other countries, whose representatives, according to him, consider Americans crazy and prefer regularity and a good rest in August.
Currently, PR campaigns have become an integral part of the marketing program of any organization.
However, even the biggest brands make mistakes when promoting a brand.
Vivid examples of unsuccessful PR campaigns of famous brands
- "I would check it out" - the unsuccessful slogan of McDonald's
In early January 2005, McDonald's launched an incomprehensible banner ad where a guy looked at a burger and then displayed the inscription "Double cheeseburger? I'd check it out." Because of the extra sexual overtones, the banner, designed for a youth audience, has become vulgar and completely unacceptable.
- New Coke
A failed PR campaign by New Coke in 1985 was a failed attempt to compete with Pepsi. Customers felt the new formula was tasteless and too sweet. After losing this campaign, Coca-Cola decided to return the unique taste to the drink. However, this campaign, as buyers said, was necessary only so that the company had time to replace cane sugar with fructose syrup.
- Microsoft blue screen
At a press conference dedicated to the release of a preliminary release - Windows 98, the OS demonstrated the so-called "blue screen of death". Bill Gates justified himself by saying "That's why it's called a pre-release."
- Butchery cover of the Beatles
On June 14, 1966, the famous four shocked America by presenting the cover of their album - "Yesterday and Today". At first, Capitol Records tried to withdraw the album and eliminate it, but then a 2nd cover was released, which was pasted on top of the previous one. McCartney and Lennon regarded this as a joke, although Harrison showed his displeasure, saying that, from the very beginning, it was disgusting and unreasonable.
As a result, this album became the only non-profit Beatles album. Although it was probably not only the cover, but also the fact that this compilation is just a compilation with no new material.
- Ford Edsel
In 1957 released Auto Edsel. The novelty was positioned as a "fancy car", although buyers did not like it. To this day, they continue to find out what exactly caused the failure. The production of the car was discontinued on November 19, 1959.
- DC vs. AC
In 1880, Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse became fierce rivals. The bone of contention was the method of delivering electricity to the buildings of ordinary Americans. Westinghouse liked the method created by Nikola Tesla, that is, alternating current, denoted "AC". Edison preferred the method direct current, referred to as "DC". Edison ran a failed PR campaign to intimidate users into using DC. At this time, a couple of articles were published about how animals were killed by discharges of AC current.
Despite this, Edison lost the information war.
Advertising must be memorable no matter what you want to sell. Companies spend billions of dollars every year on promotion designed to “hook” the target audience, be informative, promote the brand and make it recognizable. But more and more often we are witnessing how attempts to stand out from the crowd of competitors lead to the emergence of advertising campaigns that cause only irritation and shame.
The 15 miserable marketing spoofs that follow left a dark stain on the reputation of those involved in their creation, reduced sales and made Don Draper roll over in his grave.
Sexist Dockers slogan "It's time to put on your pants"
The ridiculous ad from Dockers is so saturated with misogyny that it looks more like a parody of bad marketing. First of all, the 165-word text, squeezed into a tiny rectangle, is simply hard to read. If you manage to get over yourself and read it to the end, you will be faced with a sexist tirade that claims that men are no longer the stronger sex, so they need to start wearing "real pants" again. And all this is argued by the fact that women open doors on their own, and men drink fat-free latte and eat salads.
Correctly! To hell with a modern society with equal rights for women who no longer need permission from men to enter a building! Where did these salad eaters come from, refusing real "male" food that will clog arteries and kill them by 52 years old? And all those feminists with their latte! Disdain oozes from the text, and it causes anything but the main thing - the desire to buy pants.
What's the best way to advertise a cool game console? Boast of stunning graphics? Or release exclusive versions of games? No, perhaps it's better to make the consumer associate the product with a frightening baby who seems to have been possessed by the devil.
The 2007 campaign looks less like a Playstation 3 commercial than a teaser for a new Lars von Trier movie. A frightening baby doll sits in a white room where there is nothing but a console, and eerie music, similar to the soundtrack to nightmares, plays as sound design. The doll starts laughing hysterically, then cries, but the tears come back to her eyes. "What was it?" - a natural question arises after viewing.
This is not even an intriguing teaser that was shown a couple of times and forgotten. No, that was Sony's main advertising campaign for the PS3. The company later clarified what was meant: The Playstation is such a powerful console that a baby experiences a wide range of emotions when he sees it. But no one understood this, the average viewer perceived the video as another experimental project in the field of contemporary art or new version video from The Call. Witnesses of this masterpiece spent many sleepless nights, and the start of console sales had nothing to do with it.
McDonald's call for copulation with a hamburger
Provocative slogan “Double cheeseburger? I would blow! $1 menu for me."
Large companies are trying to use Internet slang in advertising, trying to show the target audience that huge faceless conglomerates run by 50-year-old men in formal suits are on the same wavelength with them. But before that, they should have learned more about the meanings of the phrases that are used in campaigns worth several million dollars.
Apparently, no one at McDonald's bothered about this before releasing the ad in 2005. It appeared online and consisted of three banners with the words of a teenager: “Double cheeseburger? I'd hit it." The last expression can be translated into Russian as "I would blow", which is a well-known euphemism for "I want to have sex." And this is an advertisement for the largest fast food chain in the world, and not just another piece of American Pie!
A stinking spread in the Nintendo Power game magazine, the meaning of which is still unclear.
Earthbound, an RPG game that came out in 1994, became a cult classic, but it was an absolute flop when it was released in the United States. This happened for a number of reasons, one of which was a ridiculous advertising campaign. Nintendo spent $2 million promoting Earthbound, and most of that money went to stinky magazine pages that gave off nasty smells.
A now-forgotten Nintendo Power magazine featured the words "Because this game stinks" on the centerfold. There was a strip in the middle, which, when rubbed, really smelled terribly. For daredevils who dared to rub it, the whole magazine took on the smell of a dirty skunk smoked on a fire.
Other notes included an image of an air freshener with the caption, "If you want to play Earthbound, you'll need this." Other taglines included: "It's like living inside shorts after the gym", "We warn you: the game stinks", "Comes with smells worse than Pull My Finger" and "We still have a lot of stink left ".
Who was it to attract? According to Nintendo, is the average gamer dreaming of smelling sweaty shorts? The advertising campaign definitely managed to stand out from the rest, but not in a good way.
LifeLock provides personal data protection services. What could endear her better than an CEO publicly giving out his real Social Security number? The company, you see, is so good that Todd Davis is free to release any personal data! “Yes, this is my social security number,” the banner ad reads. - No, I'm not crazy. I just trust our system."
The experiment could either justify itself or end sadly. Guess what happened in the end? After the launch of the advertising campaign, Davis' personal data was used by attackers more than 13 times. The idea itself was not bad, but the shortcomings of the promotion turned it into a powerful anti-advertising. If a company can't protect the CEO's information, how can they protect yours?
Dr. Pepper - a drink "not for women"
In 2011, employees of Dr. Pepper found that men ignored diet drinks as feminine, resulting in a poorly designed 10-calorie soda ad. In a television commercial, a brutal macho on the run blows up everything around, portraying an action hero, and then says to the camera: “Hey, young ladies! Like the movie? Of course not, because it is for men.
Apparently, the logic is this: Dr. Pepper 10 is a drink for real men, because women watch only romantic comedies while drinking their girly drinks. The official slogan (“Dr. Pepper 10: Not for Women”) only made matters worse. Excluding 50% of the target audience is not the best marketing move. The ad is based on the stereotype that girls don't like action movies. Perhaps it was tricky trick reverse psychology, aimed at women buying a drink out of a sense of contradiction? But people are not that stupid. It would pass for subtle satire if it were not so unfunny and tasteless.
Miracle Whip Sauce Rebranded: Hipster Mayonnaise
In the past, the mention of Miracle Whip salad dressing could have pissed off an American child. In 2009, Kraft decided to rebrand and chose the most ridiculous of all possible ideas: to advertise their product as a punk rock alternative to mayonnaise.
There was a video on TV showing a group of hipsters eating sandwiches, playing guitar and dancing to rock music on a rooftop, because nothing makes you want to break away like the sauce in a three-layer sandwich. All this was accompanied by the following text: “We will not be silent. We do not want to pretend, blend in with the crowd, remain in the shadows. We are not like everyone else. We will not try to change ourselves. We are a blend of unique spices. We are Miracle Whip and we're not going to turn the volume down."
This attempt to please a young audience went sideways and caused nothing but laughter. When Stephen Colbert parodied this ad, Kraft reacted with public insults and claims of superiority. To speak badly about your favorite comedian of young people, trying to establish contact with her, you can’t imagine worse!
JC Penny and the occasional use of Hitler
Somehow it happened that not a single employee of JC Penny noticed: the teapot bears a striking resemblance to Adolf Hitler - the spout with a bell shows the “sieg heil” gesture, the lid is topped with a “mustache”, and the handle repeats the outlines of the dictator's hairstyle. Up close, this is not so noticeable, but when looking at the billboard from afar, the image of Hitler is clearly visible. Considering that billboards are designed to be looked at from a certain distance and briefly, it turned out not well.
It's unlikely that this was intentional, but JC Penny was flooded with complaints, so the ad had to be taken down. Kettles, on the other hand, began to quickly sell out in online stores, so it is possible that all this is some kind of thoughtful marketing ploy.
Malala Yousafzai's biography was used to advertise mattresses.
If you were a representative of a company that produces mattresses, how would you present your product to the consumer? Convenience? Good dream? Reliability? Al-Qaeda? Kurl-On opted for the latter to advertise mattresses, with a flyer showing terrorists shooting a little girl in the head, causing her to fall, covered in blood, on the mattress and jump up.
Worst of all, this is not just some abstract child, but the famous educational rights activist Malala Yousafzai, who was severely injured by the extremist Taliban when she was 14 years old, but managed to recover her health and continue her activities, becoming the youngest recipient Nobel Prize. Ogilvy & Mather, the company behind the ad, decided to draw an analogy between the springy properties of a mattress and a girl's biography, not thinking that an injured child was not the best image for advertising. Is it possible to show more disrespect than to use the scariest moment in life for real an existing person to promote a product?
The company said it was investigating, making it appear as if such an oversight was the work of prankster hackers, when in fact the ad could not have appeared without the approval of management.
Levi's 'All Shapes and Sizes' Campaign Shows Only Slim Girls
Levi's believes that this image represents every possible type of female figure.
In 2012, Levi's launched a campaign with the slogan "Attractiveness comes in all shapes and sizes." Great, so the idea is that you don't have to wear size XXS to be beautiful, and plus size models will appear in advertising?
And here it is not. Under the slogan, screaming about "all shapes and sizes", three slender girls are depicted. Moreover, in most versions of this advertisement, there is not the slightest difference between their body types. I wonder how it should represent all the diversity female figures? By "all sizes" do you mean XXS, XS and S? In another version, the girls lined up one after the other, thanks to which it becomes clear that their weight is different - plus or minus two kilograms. Although you can actually buy jeans of any size from Levi's, you won't guess from the advertising campaign. At its core good idea but the performance leaves much to be desired.
Malaysia Airlines and death reminder
After the company's image was tarnished by the death of 500 people, all its resources were directed to further marketing. In September 2014 (six months after the disappearance of Flight 370), the company held a competition called “What I want to do before I die,” in which participants must describe in 500 words what dreams they want to realize before they die. . It never occurred to anyone that compiling lists of dying wishes is not the best advertisement for a company responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people. The winner of the competition was entitled to a free economy class ticket on a Malaysia Airlines flight. What is this, some kind of black humor?
Incorrect inscription on the Bud Light label
The same incorrect label that promises the consumer a night full of adventures.
"The perfect beer to take the word 'no' out of your vocabulary tonight" is one of those occasions when you know what in question, but it is clear that the wording is clearly ambiguous. Previously, the advertising campaign used the slogan "Perfect beer, come what may" with a hint that Bud Light will help you have a fun night and decide on a crazy act that you would not dare to do sober. This makes sense, because people drink beer just to relax and have a good time. The campaign even had the #UpForWhatever hashtag to promote the brand on Twitter. It was possible to stop there, but then a fatal motto appeared.
Get drunk and not understand the word "no"? You are supposed to try new things, but this is not the first association that comes to mind. Anheuser-Bush quickly removed the slogan from the bottles, apologizing and acknowledging, "We got carried away with the new label." Oh really?
Renault and the N word
The cryptic N-word that can't be said is "no", not what the Americans thought.
It's hard to believe Renault didn't know what they were doing. The advertisement for the cars stated that for 10 days, Renault dealers were prohibited from saying the word “no” to customers. The idea is good, but an unsuccessful slogan was formulated for it: "For 10 days we will forget the word with the letter N." At the mention of the forbidden word to the letter N, to any American immediately comes to the mind of a racist word “Nikger”, but not “no”.
Many were offended and Renault stopped using the motto, claiming it was a misunderstanding. Can anyone remember that the word "no" was ever replaced by the euphemism "N-word"? The company was well aware of how people would react, and it deliberately attracted attention, using a dishonest trick to get the consumer to read the entire text. This was not a simple oversight, but a deliberate and offensive use of a negative connotation word to sell cars.
The inscription "Dad, I'm gay" in the form of a bullet threatening a porcelain heart.
Some of the incidents came out by accident: marketers just got excited with the slogan, which eventually acquired a double interpretation against their will. It is difficult to find any explanation for Flora's advertising, except for the company's hatred of homosexuals.
In 2013, margarine maker Flora decided to focus on the health benefits of its product, resulting in horribly misleading advertising. It depicts the words "Dad, I'm gay" in the form of a bullet flying towards a porcelain heart, and below this is the following slogan: "Today you need a strong heart." Do the creators really think that finding out about the orientation of a son is like getting a bullet in the heart?
Flora claims to have disapproved of the advertisement and that it was developed by a third party. But it is hard to believe that the entire leadership had their hands tied in this matter. The managing director of the organization that released the ad apologized for the "unintentional insults". But how can they be unintentional if there is simply no other interpretation (except homophobic) for this advertisement?
Creating a good advertising campaign is a difficult creative task. The perpetrators of the incidents collected above do not seem to think so. The only way to make advertising better is to collect and analyze the mistakes made in it. The presented selection can be considered as bad advice to a novice marketer with a wish to avoid such mistakes in every possible way.