There are many reasons why an advertising campaign might fail. Maybe there wasn’t enough of a budget dedicated to spreading the word. Or, the ideas weren’t creative enough to make the product stand out from competitors.
Marketers also note that to have a successful campaign, one has to have a single clear goal. You shouldn’t try to cover all the bases with one campaign. So, if you’re aiming for more social media subscribers, don’t also expect to get more website traffic or sales. Go one step at a time.
But, sometimes, the goals are clear, the marketers have plenty of money, and the ad does stand out but it’s still a failure. That’s because it stands out for all the wrong reasons. It is so out of the box that it goes a bit overboard.
Over the years, there have been plenty of such examples. Today, we want to present to you the ones that were kindly collected by Oxford College of Marketing and put on their highly entertaining and informative TikTok page. Scroll down to cringe at these magnificent lapses of judgment.
#1
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The noughties culture was wild. Misogyny was rampant everywhere, being gay was lame, and fat people were the butt of every other joke. And while many of us might have laughed at the fat Monica jokes, it’s not quite as funny seeing them now. Arguably, they are the cringiest part of watching Friends reruns.
But just as Jennifer Aniston pointed out in her interview, the sensitivities have changed over time. Even at the end of the 2000s, PETA’s fatphobic “Save the Whales, Lose the Blubber: Go Vegetarian” ad was met with a strong negative reaction. The ad was taken down a month after being installed in Jacksonville, Florida.
#2
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#3
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However, PETA is, of course, not the apologetic type. Instead of trying to maintain the company’s decorum, a move we’re so used to seeing these days, they doubled down on their statements.
“America’s obesity epidemic calls for tough love à la Dr. Phil and America’s Biggest Loser,” said president and founder of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, in a response to Huffington Post. “Not more coddling and mock shock over a billboard pointing out that the majority of fat people need to have some discipline and remember that being fat means being a bad role model to our children, many of whom are now so fat themselves that “teeter-totter” has come to describe their wobbly gait.”
Quite a statement for an organization who has never been concerned for people’s wellbeing and advocates for animal, not human, rights.
#4
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#5
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#6
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A commercial that might have benefitted from a little standing up for themselves, is the infamous Dove Facebook ad which they deeply apologized for. At least, that’s according to Lola, the woman who acted in it.
“If Dove have defended their creative vision and defended their choice to use me as a dark-skinned woman, defended the reasoning for using me first, [they] could have put a different type of narrative into play.”
#7
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#8
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#9
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The ad famously showed a dark-skinned woman, played by Lola, changing her shirt and turning into a light-skinned woman. Many considered the video racist by implying that one can wash away the color of their skin.
“To have the opportunity to show that I do feel beautiful and I am valued in media was extremely exciting for me. So, for it to come out and be taken out of context and then kind of spiral into a global controversy was really overwhelming and quite upsetting as well,” Lola commented on the situation.
#10
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#11
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#12
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Sometimes the companies even have to apologize for the ads they did not approve. For example, Unilever had to issue a statement regarding a rogue ad for their margarine brand Flora.
A South African ad agency created a poster in which bullet-shaped words saying “Uhh, Dad I’m gay” are aiming at a porcelain heart. At the bottom, the slogan “You need a strong heart today” proudly sits next to Flora’s logo.
Unilever claims that they never approved the ad and that they find it “offensive and unacceptable.” The ad company that did produce the poster then issued their statement apologizing for “the unintended offence it has regrettably caused.”
#13
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#14
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#15
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Burger King also tried to take the spotlight off themselves when they were being called out over an ad in which a woman is suggestively eating one of their sandwiches. They said the poster was created in Singapore and was intended to be used only in the Singapore market. As if that makes approving the poster an okay thing to do.
#16
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#17
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#18
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Almost five years after the ad came out, the model featured in it made a video response about it. She claimed that the image of her that they used was taken from an online catalog of her pictures without her consent. She says that they never reached out to her and the way they used the image made her feel violated. Understandably so.
#19
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#20
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#21
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Attention grabbing advertising copy can make or break an ad, and in the case of Pretzel Crisps, it was definitely the latter. The company used an infamous pro-anorexia line “You can never be too thin” when advertising their thin snacks back in 2010. When the backlash started rolling in, they didn’t really have a plan on how to manage it.
#22
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#23
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#24
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At first, they decided to just go with it, tweeting that “thin just happens to be a good word to describe the shape of our product.” But when the uproar started getting louder, they gave into the pressure and changed the ad copy to… “Tastes as good as skinny feels,” a famously controversial “thinspiration” phrase. It didn’t take too long for them to remove that too, and pretend it never happened.
All in all, it seems that this trend of awful misjudgments is not going to end any time soon. People think, “We’re over this, we’re a progressive society,” and then Balenciaga steps in and the counter for ‘days without marketing accidents’ is back to zero. At least, we’ll always find material for another list like this one.
#25
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#26
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