In 2007, Subway released a $5 footlong campaign complete with a catchy jingle. The campaign went on to last for a decade, which is a long time for any sort of special. People did complain that the subs weren’t all exactly 12”, though. Then, in 2016, the chain raised the price to $6 to cover inflation. The public wasn’t happy, and now we’ve lost our beloved $5 sandwich forever.
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While we agree that “hotness” does come in all shapes and sizes, we’re not sure Levi’s knows what that means. It doesn’t take a genius to recognize the only body type presented here. Levi’s wanted to profit on inclusivity, but instead, they turned a lot of people away.
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Nobody is really sure why Kia is so obsessed with hamsters. Sure, real hamsters are cute, but when you make them humanoid, it gets weird. When you slap female hamsters into skin-tight leather outfits in an attempt to make them hot, it makes everybody uncomfortable.
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For some reason, big companies think not getting consent is okay. For example, Bud Light knew that people don’t get to sleep with whoever they want, so they encouraged these rejects to get someone drunk and then sleep with them. Sound terrible? We think so too.
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In the same decade as the #MeToo movement, Bloomingdale thought it would be a great idea to encourage you to spike your friend’s drink. Spiked drinks are synonymous with assault. Statistically, most happen by people you already know. We don’t know what Bloomingdale was thinking, but we don’t want to be friends with them.
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This marketing mistake was not made by a huge company, but it’s still baffling. A certain kind of Ice Cream is a thing in India. It’s not a coincidental name, either. It also features his face on the packaging. We’re not sure why they did this.
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In summer 2018, IHOP announced they’d change their name to “IHOb” but did not immediately announce what the “b” stood for. They wanted to build suspense. The internet was full of guesses, but nobody hit the mark. When IHOP announced that the “b” stood for “Burgers” the world was outraged. Luckily, this illogical change was just a marketing spoof. We have “IHOP” again!
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Ever heard the sentence, “Don’t talk to me till I’ve had my coffee”? Apparently, Starbucks hadn’t. In the midst of America’s racial tensions, the coffee company wanted to show their support of all people by encouraging customers and employees to have deep, world-changing conversations at the register. Unsurprisingly, nobody wanted to have a deep conversation with a line behind them. The campaign didn’t even last a full week.
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Body shaming is generally accepted as unacceptable in today’s society. IHOP didn’t get the memo, though, and continued to perpetuate the stereotype that women with small breasts are physically unattractive. People all around were not happy.
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Even if you’re advertising for deodorant, claiming “White is purity” is never a good idea. The only people who liked it were problematic groups, and those people were very outspoken about their newfound liking for Nivea.
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This campaign did a great job of insulting dads everywhere. It implied that dads did nothing when raising children, including changing diapers. “Putting dads to the test” was their way of saying that their diapers could withstand children going without being changed for far too long, all thanks to their dad’s incompetence. Dads everywhere were not happy.
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On the back of many products, you’ll find a funky little square called a QR Code that you can scan with your smartphone. The scanned code then takes you to the website of whoever owns that QR code. Heinz once let their QR codes expire. The codes were then bought by an adult content site. The customers who discovered this were not happy.
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When protesters took to the streets in Cairo, Egypt, Kenneth Cole decided it was prime time to make more money. They tweeted a joking claim that people were taking to the streets because of their new spring collection. We’re not professionals, but it doesn’t seem like the start of a revolution is the best time to market your brand.
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During the 5-week battle of Iwo Jima in 1945, almost 30,000 people died with another 20,000 people injured. It was a bloody battle that has been honored in America with the iconic Marine Corps War Memorial. Under Armour’s basketball shirt was both unpatriotic and disrespectful of human life and sacrifice. The company faced an online backlash.
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You should know that blackface is not a good thing. You should also know that you shouldn’t have to be white to be successful. A Korean Beauty company proved they didn’t know either of these things with a single video. They released an ad featuring both blackface and the tagline “You just need to be white to win.” Well, that’s just not true.
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In 2013, tragedy struck when a bomber attacked the Boston Marathon. In a poor choice of words after the 2017 marathon, Adidas sent out an email to the finishers saying, “Congrats, you survived the Boston Marathon!” This would work for most marathons, but was way too much, way too soon for Boston.
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Tens of millions of Americans own smart speakers, devices that respond to audio cues for things like quick web searches, music, and weather updates. Burger King knew that. In an ad talking about the greatness of their Whoppers, they asked Google Home for the ingredients of the Whopper. This then prompted Google Homes to read the results found on Wikipedia. It was a great idea... until people hacked Wikipedia to say that Whoppers were “Cancer-causing” and contained cyanide.
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In 2006, Sony tried to market their white PlayStation Portable (PSP), but in doing so, they added their name to the growing list of problematic ad makers. However, Sony’s ad manages to look more purposefully hateful than most companies. After all, it’s hard not to when you include the tagline “White is coming,” alongside an image as aggressive as this one.
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This viral breakdown of a Facebook ad is a great example of the internet taking things out of context. The full ad shows people of all types in a friendly way. This specific set of images, though, makes Dove look fairly problematic. As a result of the out-of-context pictures, the company suffered some serious backlash.
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On Twitter, the hashtag #WhyIStayed was adopted by people who were sharing their stories of domestic trauma. DiGorno saw the hashtag was trending, and without getting context, tweeted “#WhyIStayed You had pizza.” They quickly realized their mistake and apologized profusely.
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Pepsi slipped up with Kendall Jenner. In 2017, in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement, Pepsi produced a commercial in which Jenner gives police and protesters Pepsi to create peace. The ad was said to “trivialize the movement.” Twitter took to the commercial, posting pictures of MLK and Pearl Harbor alongside the caption: “If only they had Pepsi.”
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Alice in Wonderland has produced some fun and quirky stuff. A few years back, Disney Japan tweeted out an Alice themed “Happy Unbirthday” tweet with the caption “Congrats on a trifling day.” Normally, this would be okay Alice-themed material. Their mistake? It was the anniversary of the Nagasaki bombings.
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Dove has always been good at encouraging people to be comfortable in their own skin. Because of this longstanding relationship with their customers, people didn’t come down on Dove too harshly when they produced bottles designed to look like women of all shapes and sizes. That said, nobody wants to look like any of these shampoo bottles.
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The New York City police department is very active on Twitter. Hoping to combat all of the public mistakes police officers have made in recent years, they created the hashtag #myNYPD with the intention of encouraging people to share pictures of officers being nice, helpful members of the community. Instead, people shared pictures of the NYPD’s police being aggressive and problematic. It wasn’t quite the response the department was looking for.
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If you’re worried about your social security number getting stolen, LifeLock is not the company for you. It’s designed to protect your security number. Todd Davis, the founder of the company, was so confident in LifeLock that he put his social security number on billboards, trucks, and their website. Naturally, it was stolen. 13 times.
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In one of the funniest marketing scares of the all-time, Boston proved just how out of the loop they are. Cartoon Network, in what they called a guerrilla marketing campaign, placed a bunch of LED pictures of a cartoon character in 10 cities. Nine cities knew what the light-ups were. Boston, however, did not. They thought the characters were bombs. They shut down roads for half a day, sent out bomb squads, and basically proved they would not know how to handle a real bomb threat.
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Any attention is good attention, right? Ehhhh, maybe. Not really. We don’t want to be compared to… sheet. We’re not going to spot anybody else from doing it, though.
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We understand advertising campaigns are planned months in advance. It’s still not a great idea to send out ads promoting Airbnb’s fancy water-home during hurricane season. Airbnb’s luck ran out when this ad was sent out during Hurricane Harvey, the storm that wrecked parts of Texas.
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When you buy a car, you need to check it out and make sure it’s up to standards. Unless you’re buying an Audi. Because you can trust Audis, you can spend that time inspecting the nose, ears, and teeth of your son’s bride-to-be. After all, women are measured by their physical attributes... We’re not sure what Audi was trying to say here, but people everywhere were not fans.
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