Epic Marketing Fails That Took Everyone by Surprise

 

Marketing is one of the core functions of an organisation. Based on how well an organisation manages its marketing activities, the success of the organisation depends immensely. However, there are certain events where companies failed to execute their marketing strategies, and the tactics backfired badly. This blog addresses some of the worst marketing fails of all time.

Airbnb's floating world email: Airbnb's case is a pure example of 'right content, wrong time.'. in the year 2017, Airbnb launched the 'Floating Air' marketing campaign where they posted the picture of a water-themed house on a floating pool. However, during the same time, a hurricane hit Houston and caused colossal damage. Because of the horrible timing of the content, many people deemed the content insensitive and started bashing Airbnb for it (Lally, 2021).

White Playstation 2: in the year 2006, Sony launched a white version of its originally black-colored PlayStation 2. To announce the entry of a differently coloured PS2, Sony thought of a 'clever marketing gimmick. In the advert, a pale white-haired woman was seen holding the face of a black woman. While the white-haired woman looks apathetic, the black woman looks very submissive (Egan, 2021). This outrageously racist display caused an uproar in the gaming community, and Sony had to pull off the advertisement.

Dove's Racist Facebook Advertisement: The year 2017 was not a good year for Unilever, the Umbrella brand that owns Dove. To add salt to the wound, Dove came up with an advertisement that was racist by all means (Egan, 2021). In the advertisement, Dove used a panel image consisting of four pictures. In the first two, a black woman is seen opening her T-shirt. When she is finally done, a white woman emerges from the other end.

Adidas's Poorly Worded Email: In the year 2017, Adidas sent a congratulatory email to everyone who completed the Boston Marathon. The email read, 'Congrats, you survived the Boston Marathon.'. in essence, it is a very harmless email, and it's also humorous. However, this email was considered offensive to some people because in 2013, a deadly bombing incident occurred during Boston Marathon, which led to three people, and more than 250 people were injured. Adidas issued a formal apology to the people, but it was already too late (Lally, 2021).

Wendy's Tweet Failure: Wendy's found itself amid a Twitter battle with a customer where the customer asked if Wendy's actually used fresh beef for making their products. At first, the whole incident was harmless. At one point of escalation, Wendy's decided to take things further with a funny meme. They used the 'Pepe the Frog' meme template to make their statement. However, in 2016, the white supremacists used the same frog to represent themselves in the 2016 presidential election. Wendy's came under heat for their insensitive meme and had to remove the post immediately. But by the time it was removed, many people had taken screenshots, and it was reposted later on to torment the fast-food chain.

Walker's Selfie Competition: The UK-based snack company wanted to harness the power of UGC. So, it launched an SMM campaign where the customers were encouraged to post a selfie in order to win tickets to a big sporting event. However, some of the participants started to post insensitive pictures of dictators, serial killers, rapists, etc. This turned a harmless UGC attempt into a grim one, and it was a PR nightmare for the company (Lally, 2021).

References

Egan, K., 2021. 6 Social Media Marketing Failures & What You Can Learn from Them. [online] Impactplus.com. Available at: <https://www.impactplus.com/blog/social-media-marketing-failures> [Accessed 30 October 2021].

Lally, M., 2021. 20 of the Biggest Marketing Fails of All Time. [online] Bluleadz Inbound Agency. Available at: <https://www.business2community.com/marketing/20-of-the-biggest-marketing-fails-of-all-time-and-why-they-sucked-02287809> [Accessed 30 October 2021].

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