We live in an attention economy. But because we have access to constant stimulation, it can be incredibly difficult to grab someone’s focus, especially if you’re trying to advertise a product or service. So companies need to come up with bold, creative ideas to engage consumers. They just have to be careful not to make massive mistakes, or their customers won’t ever let them live it down.
Netizens have been discussing some of the worst marketing campaigns that companies have ever run, so we’ve gathered a list of these painfully bad ideas below. From unintentionally making insensitive comments to seemingly inviting customers to mock them, these campaigns definitely should not have gotten the green light. Enjoy reading about these PR disasters, and be sure to upvote the ones that you believe should have cost someone their job!
#61
I worked for BlackBerry from 2010 to 2012.
I can’t narrow it down to one, lol.
I can’t narrow it down to one, lol.
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3points
#62
Burger King's "Where's Herb" commercials are a classic advertising flop.
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3points
#63
The CMO of my company did a Twitter marketing push using a third party company without talking to me, the marketing manager who handles socials.
The company used the most recognizable meme old man in three of the ads. Did not go well for us.
The fix was firing them and letting me handle it from there.
The company used the most recognizable meme old man in three of the ads. Did not go well for us.
The fix was firing them and letting me handle it from there.
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2points
#64
American Eagle “good jeans” campaign with Sydney Sweeney.
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2points
#65
Not me but an agency.
Wanting to promote English literature bachelors and masters and they had added ‘English course’ as a keyword. I’d not approved that and in the first report they were like ‘this campaign is doing REALLY WELL’
Of course it’s doing well - millions of people are learning English, not millions of people want to do a literature degree. Cost a couple of hundred so could have been worse, but that was ONE KEYWORD.
Wanting to promote English literature bachelors and masters and they had added ‘English course’ as a keyword. I’d not approved that and in the first report they were like ‘this campaign is doing REALLY WELL’
Of course it’s doing well - millions of people are learning English, not millions of people want to do a literature degree. Cost a couple of hundred so could have been worse, but that was ONE KEYWORD.
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1point
#67
The BK Chicken Fries commercial with the vibrating cell phone. Everybody in the room thinks its theirs when they are watching. So annoying.
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1point
#68
One starcraft 2 pro team came into existance one day, it was a small team but had some known names on it
anyways on april 1st there marketing campaign began, they had one of the players write a long slander post about how terrible a team they were (noone would take it seriously its april 1st right?) needless to say noone got the joke and a bunch of hate started on them that took a while to explain
and then they decided to start a meme contest about there players, and unfortunately there 2 most known players were either fat or transgender so basically all the memes were incredibly insulting
that team didnt last long.
anyways on april 1st there marketing campaign began, they had one of the players write a long slander post about how terrible a team they were (noone would take it seriously its april 1st right?) needless to say noone got the joke and a bunch of hate started on them that took a while to explain
and then they decided to start a meme contest about there players, and unfortunately there 2 most known players were either fat or transgender so basically all the memes were incredibly insulting
that team didnt last long.
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-2points
#70
Many years ago, I ran a generic search based campaign to female shoulder bags as at the time I was trying to have my own e-commerce store, needless to say I learnt that you can't blindly run Google Ad campaigns with no preparation. I think I lost a couple hundred dollars on it or smth which at a time was a lot of money for me. So yes it was terrible.
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-6points
