10 Failed Ad Campaigns That Actually Drove Away Customers
By Gerri, Business Pundit, 28 October 2013.
By Gerri, Business Pundit, 28 October 2013.
Advertising is key; each year, brands spend incredible amounts of money on research and development to find out what makes their target audience tick and then trying to capitalize on that in fresh, unique and edgy ways. But attempts to appear cutting edge often cross the line, leaving unhappy customers walking away from a brand that feebly tries to undo the damage by pulling their waste-of-money ad campaigns and offering back pedalling apologies. Here are 10 failed ad campaigns that backfired horribly and drove away some customers for good.
10. Abercrombie & Fitch’s Racist T-Shirts
What better way to celebrate Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month than with a bunch of poorly drawn racist caricatures plastered over a new line of offensive t-shirts? In 2002, Abercrombie & Fitch did exactly that, creating a number of racist shirts depicting goofy, bucktoothed Asians in paddy hats advertising stereotypical services like a laundry service bearing the slogan “Two Wongs Can Make it White” and a Pizza Dojo which said “Eat in Or Wok Out.” Not surprisingly, Asian Americans everywhere were outraged and millions of emails were sent out to the company in protest. The racist shirts made news on the San Francisco Chronicle and all the bad PR eventually forced the company to respond, which they did with confusion instead of genuine concern.
“We are truly and deeply sorry we’ve offended people,” said Abercrombie & Fitch’s PR firm representative Hampton Carney, “…We personally thought Asians would love this T-shirt.”
Due to the backlash, the shirts were withdrawn from stores nationwide.
9. Sony PSP: Black vs White
To advertise the upcoming release of the white version of their PlayStation Portable, Sony released a number of subway, billboard and print ads that distastefully displayed a white woman dressed all in white seemingly assaulting a frightened-looking black woman dressed all in black. Racist much? Whoever thought that millions of people wouldn’t see this ad and instantly think of the injustices against African Americans that have taken place in the not-so-distant past definitely lost their job the day that these ads went to print.
After thousands of angry emails and a lot of terrible PR coverage from media outlets everywhere, Sony weakly released a statement saying “The marketing campaign for the launch of the White PSP in the Benelux focuses on the contract between the Black PSP model and the new Ceramic White PSP model,” which is basically a souped-up way of saying “Deal with it.”
8. Easy Jet
Popular airline company British Airways launched a marketing campaign in 2011 bearing the slogan “To Fly. To Serve.” which was pretty well received by its target audience. Rival company Easy Jet, however, were spurned to create a competitive - and debatably distasteful - response campaign.
“To Fly. To Save.” was the slogan Easy Jet chose to use in an image that, according to them “had a little fun” with the British Airways ad. There is no doubt that they were immediately wallowing in regret after posting the mocking image to their Facebook page, which received almost a hundred negative comments lauding them as “jealous,” “sleazy,” and a “once-great company.” Other comments accused the company of wasting money on dividends, providing subpar and rude customer service, and even of deleting disparaging comments.
7. Kenneth Cole
Kenneth Cole seems to be adept at losing customers, as multiple insensitive and poorly thought out comments and ad campaigns have been popping up from them over the past few years.
Hurricane jokes, laughing at the expense of starving Somalians, and poking fun at the social uprising in Cairo, Egypt are only some of the insensitive stances Cole has taken on both Twitter and in print ads since as early as 2006.
“Black Pants Down - Our new looks are more slimming than a Somali diet! #KennethColeTweets” read one Tweet by the ill-humoured company.
“Of course there are no gays in Iran, they’re all shopping at my new outlet in Dubai. Holla! #KennethColeTweets” read another. After making a post-9/11 joke and finally a joke that demeaned the Egyptian protests by saying “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumour is they heard our new spring collection is now available at [link]“, Kenneth Cole finally apologized and removed some of their inappropriate jokes, but there’s no doubt that the company’s rampant insensitivity lost them a number of customers.
6. Anonymous Insurance Company
After creating and facing incredible backlash for this horrendous blunder, it’s no surprise that the company behind the following PR stunt chose to stay anonymous.
Mark and Audrey were a couple so in love that they decided to take to Facebook and YouTube to try and garner public support for their proposed marriage after their parents forbade them from marrying due to their age difference. Although Mark was 23 and Audrey was 47, the couple insisted that their love was strong and would prevail. Thousands of teary-eyed viewers rallied on social media outlets to show their support via likes, comments and shares.
Due to the incredible amount of support they were receiving, Mark and Audrey decided to live stream a video of their wedding day online. But when Mark rushed back to his hotel room to grab something important which he had forgotten, the sound of screeching wheels and a slamming noise in the background brought the wedding to a halt. Mark had been hit by a car and killed instantly.
“Unexpected things happen in life. Be insured to have your loved ones assured” read a message that floated across the screen. Mark wasn’t dead after all - in fact, he had never existed in the first place.
All the emotionally invested and supported fans of this couple were absolutely and understandably outraged that they had been tricked, and the company behind this genius idea smartly decided to stay anonymous lest they lose a whole lot of upset customers.
5. McDonald’s and McDStories
McDonald’s thought it would be a great idea to try and engage their fans via social media platform Twitter by encouraging followers to tell delicious “McDStories” about pleasant experiences they’ve had at various establishments across the world. But the use of the hashtag quickly backfired when it was hijacked by angry and dissatisfied customers who used it to instead criticize the company for unethical animal treatment practices, poor quality ingredients, and tell unhappy stories of miserable experiences had at McDonald’s restaurants.
Clicking on #McDStories, instead of making the unsuspecting browser hungry, was more likely to turn them away from the brand forever since they would be faced with hundreds of complaints and sordid stories that were less than appetizing. McDonald’s quickly pulled their ad campaign by removing the two promoted tweets they had paid for, but the damage was done and there’s no erasing thousands of public complaints from the Internet.
4. LifeLock
“I’m Todd Davis, and this is my social security number” started a number of commercials and ads by Todd Davis, CEO of identity theft prevention company LifeLock. His social security number was plastered on billboards, in magazines, and on the sides of moving vehicles. Unfortunately, his challenge was taken up by a number of identity thieves who proved successful on their missions to steal money from Davis - a crime which Davis and his company didn’t catch until he was later accosted by collection agencies looking for him to pay up that US$500 loan that was fraudulently taken out in his name in Texas. There’s nothing that says “terrible PR” like blatant living proof that the sole purpose of your company is completely unreliable and untrustworthy in a very frightening way.
3. Groupon
Groupon spent millions of dollars on their SuperBowl ads, so it’s unfortunate that one of their commercials turned out to be so demeaning to the Tibetan people and their struggles that it caused incredible backlash and had to be pulled just a few days after airing. This waste of time and energy featured actor Timothy Hutton discussing human rights abuses in Tibet before taking only a second to transition into praising the fish curry at Himalayan restaurants and thanking Groupon for his ability to reap the delicious deals.
“The people of Tibet are in trouble,” Hutton explains in the cringe-inducing ad, “Their very culture is in jeopardy. But they still whip up an amazing fish curry.”
Groupon faced thousands of disparaging comments, letters and phone calls accusing the company of trivializing the issues of the Tibetan people, forcing them to pen an apology, feebly state that they “poke fun at everyone,” and offer to donate money to charity - as long as their customers (or former ones) did so first.
2. BP
After BP’s epic, horrific oil spill which killed 11 people and destroyed the environment in a huge way, CEO Tony Hayward for some reason felt it necessary to release an advertising campaign telling people just how sorry he was for the 100,000 barrels of oil wreaking havoc in the ocean and promising to address the damage. If BP hadn’t lost hundreds of thousands of customers already, his ad definitely prompted even more to stop buying BP products - not only was the ad a transparent lie in the face of court battles BP engaged in to try and avoid paying sentenced fines, but the commercial came shortly after Hayward faced criticism from media outlets everywhere for selfishly saying “There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. I’d like my life back.”
Even President Obama found the ad distasteful, who said that BP might want to focus on clean-up efforts instead of ineffective PR campaigns.
1. Absolut Vodka and Mexico
Absolut vodka probably fired a few people in the marketing department after releasing an ad in Mexico which featured a map of the US and Mexico as they were in 1848 before the Mexican-American war which was plastered with the slogan “In An Absolut World.”
Was Absolut suggesting that Mexico would be taking over part of the US, or that the war should have ended differently, or was this just someone’s ill-thought out and distasteful idea of an edgy and eye-catching ad? Thousands of Mexicans were angry despite weak defensive statements from a related Mexican PR agency that said “Mexicans talk about how the Americans stole their land, so this is their way of reclaiming it. It’s very relevant and the Mexicans will love the idea.” But reclaim it how? By getting drunk on Absolut vodka?
Thousands decided to boycott Absolut, with many speaking out against the brand on social media outlets and vowing to never buy from them again.
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