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Everybody makes mistakes. But most of us are lucky enough not to have to do so on a global stage. If you’re running a huge company, though, you'd better make sure to dot all of your i’s and cross your t’s before unveiling something to the public. Otherwise, you might never live those failures down…
Redditors have recently been recalling some of the absolute worst PR disasters companies and individuals have been guilty of. From out-of-touch ad campaigns to slogans that definitely should not have gone to print, here’s a list of hilarious mistakes that might give you secondhand embarrassment. Enjoy scrolling through these botched PR moves, and be sure to upvote the ones you won’t ever forget!
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
There's a local gay bar in the city where I'm from. Its the only gay bar really. They do drag shows, play different music and people can just be themselves there. A cornerstone of the nightlife in the city.
The first week of college is called "freshers week" and its usually a manic time to go out as people return for college or are starting a new chapter of their life. Big bucks for the pubs as you can imagine.
Drag queen heads into the pub to start getting ready for her show that evening....they are taking down everything in the bar. All the flags, art and other gay culture items in the place. Drag queen is like ehhh whats going on here? And gets told lol soz your show is cancelled indefinitely.
Nothing is worse than a Drag queen scorned and they find out the corporate overlords of the bar want to change it into a sports bar type place for freshers week. They hold a huge protest across the street in the pissing rain and the whole city sees. The new bar flops and a few smaller gay spots pop up as well as other pubs snatching up the Drag queens for brunches and other events.
That was in ~2023 and that huge cornerstone pub still lies vacant.
RELATED:
#2
Getting rid of the Taco Bell dog. The dog was a genius. The PR team…not so much.
#3
Remember when Elon Musk had his lead designer throw a steel ball at the Cybertruck windows to prove how strong it was and it broke both times? Luckily for them, the truck was so hideous that people actually focused more on its terrible design than the botched demonstration.
Kongbuck:
The worst part about that whole debacle is that the idea they were trying to demonstrate (laminated side windows in a car) is an incredibly bad idea. Unless you NEED armored windows for security reasons, having laminated windows on the sides prevents a rescuer from being able to smash the window to save you if you get into a wreck. Those escape hammers won't work from the inside if you accidentally drive into water either.
#4
A Monsanto lobbyist goes on TV and claims Roundup is not harmful to humans, it's so safe you can drink it. Talkshow host pulls out a glass of Roundup for the lobbyist to drink since it perfectly safe. The lobbyist then refuses to drink it saying "I'm not drinking that, I'm not an idiot".
Freddy M. (He/Him) 15 hours ago
Roundup is apparently herbicide, for those who also didn't know
#5
Hobby Lobby defending their decision to stay open during the Covid lockdowns by saying they were essential because they sold fabrics for mask making, and putting out a letter that said the founder's wife a had a vision from God that told her to keep stores open because God will weather us from the storm. Not a great way to spin it when many people already refuse to shop there because of the owner's wackadoodle beliefs, not using barcodes, and not to mention, smuggling Iraqui artifacts into the US, later having to pay a $3 million fine, and return everything back to Iraq.
Tamra 8 hours ago (edited)
Hobby Lobby is problematic for a number of reasons, notably for the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case. In essence: the Supreme Court allowed “the commercial, profit-making world” to deny people access to basic health care like birth control because of religious beliefs. The owners claimed that it violated their religious beliefs to let their employees have access to birth control coverage through insurance coverage they offered.
#6
The US Army did a Twitter PR campaign for Memorial Day one year and it backfired tremendously. It asked “How did serving impact you?” along with a video of some poor PFC talking about how the Army made his life better.
The thread got tens of thousands of replies from vets and family members describing PTSD, losing loved ones, injuries, and how bad the VA and the Army had treated people coming back.
The Army ended up putting out a statement like “thanks for your sharing your real stories, we’re committed to your mental health blah blah blah.”.
Vix Spiderthrust 5 hours ago
When I worked in a*******n services there was a guy there who had worked for the British Army and was an alcoholic. He told his commanding officer about his issue and was placed on the standard Army treatment for alcoholism - a one-weekend course. At the end of course, the finale was "You have now completed rehabilitation training and are no longer an alcoholic. Let's go to the pub."
#7
When parker pen entered the mexican market, they had an ad that was supposed to say “it won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you.” they mistakenly thought “embarazar” meant embarrass, but it means “to impregnate.” so, their ads told mexican customers the pen wouldn’t make them pregnant.
Am I Funny? Maybe or maybe not 15 hours ago
Well, it shouldn't make them pregnant. So, I guess it's true..... Hopefully.
#8
McDonald's CEO pretending to eat their new burger.
wino_whynot:
Product. He ate their new product.
viskoviskovisko:
It was taped. They didn’t have to release it. I don’t understand what they were thinking.
Ozzel:
The worst part is how he keeps talking about it. Like, dude, just shut up.
Lee Gilliland 15 hours ago
It's on BP a few days back. It looked like he tasted a whole three molecules.
#9
Years ago, Scope mouthwash named Rosie O’Donnell one of the country’s “least kissable celebrities.”
She immediately started promoting Listerine on her show, even had people swilling it on camera, and every time one of her guests kissed her they’d donate $1,000 to charity.
Eventually, Scope tried to apologize and even took out a full page apology ad, but she kept up with her “Say nope to Scope” campaign and ended up with like $500K worth of charitable donations.
Fat Harry (Oi / You) 9 hours ago
Even funnier, SCOPE is a charity in the UK, formerly known as "The Spastics Society" (an outdated term for cerebral palsy). So Scope as a brand wouldn't go down well anyway, which is probably why we have listerine but not Scope.
#10
Jake Paul hawking his own brand of antiperspirant then getting on stage having sweat through his suit jacket.
#11
P Diddy's Pepsi song! In 2006 Pepsi gave all this money to Diddy to make a new jingle and they made a super bowl commercial around it and everything and the song went "♫ Brown and Bubbly ♫"
Dude, brown and bubbly?! Who on the english-speaking earth doesn't immediately think of violent diarrhea?
#12
Bud Light managing to get both sides to boycott them was pretty epic PR bungling. Piss off Conservatives by hiring a Trans influencer for PR, then piss off Liberals & the LGBTQ+ by apologizing and pulling the ad. Now no one buys Bud Light. I think their sales are still down 30-40% from before the boycott.
sickwobsm8:
I know someone who worked in their sales dept and everyone was livid with the head of marketing. Basically vaporized what was an all but guaranteed bonus because of that campaign.
Enginerdad:
I think the boycott gave a lot of people the opportunity to realize how little Bud Light contributed to their lives. Even if they got over the outrage, there's no point in switching back to your original bubbly water alcohol once you've found a new bubbly water alcohol and realized they're all the same.
#13
Axe body spray.
Wow, what a cool brand, anybody can get laid if they just use axe body spray. One day axe did a survey after sales had dropped because all of their ads feature a nerdy loser using it leading to it gaining a reputation of "only losers use axe body spray".
#14
Dasani tried selling in the UK, knowing they’d need to overcome some hurdles, particularly that bottled water just really wasn’t a thing over there like in the US. In the UK, spring-sourced mineral water would come in bottles and be more expensive because of the source, but just normal bottled water wasn’t out there.
Unfortunately for Dasani, they bottled the water from an area nearby Peckham, where an episode of Only Fools and Horses featured the main comedy duo secretly selling tap water marketed as mineral water with the episode ending revealing that they’d accidentally contaminated the water source.
3 weeks after Dasani launched, a journalist noticed in a grocery supply magazine that Dasani was treated tap water with minerals added rather than spring-sourced mineral water but priced the same.
That hurt the brand, but the death blow came when it turned out that a bad batch of calcium chloride had been delivered to them which resulted in elevated levels of bromate in the final product forcing a massive recall.
So Dasani was selling tap water “marketed” as mineral water that it turns out was contaminated. It was the plot of the episode almost to a T.
Dasani ceased UK operations shortly after the recall.
Coca-Cola did later release other brands, but they’re all specifically spring or mineral water now.
#15
If you’re on TikTok look up Pavvy the Goaltender.
She used to love Bauer equipment and would showcase her thousands of dollars of purchases. Someone sent her a catalogue of soon-to-be-released equipment and she showed it to her niche following and showcased the things she was excited about.
Bauer reached out the her asking for her personal contact information to discuss a collab. She was excited. As soon as they had her personal email they sent her a cease and desist letter. The catalogue had not yet been released and they don’t want it shown. They could have just asked her to take the video down.
And so the internet did its thing. .
#16
The Pittsburgh Pirates had personalized bricks outside their stadium that people purchased when the stadium opened in 2001. They were touted as being there forever. Before last season they just vanished and no one knew where they went (aside from ownership). Until someone took a photo of them in pile in a dump.
HappyKhicken:
Worse than that, the fans actively tried to at least get them back so they could be returned to the original owners, but were blocked by the Pirates at every turn.
It was a big deal in the Pittsburgh area and people were super pissed off. One of the rare times I've seen everyone agree on the same side on social media.
shiftingtech:
Its amazing how many organizations fundraise with "forever" things, without actually thinking it through.
Tourist attraction / historical park near me used to sell really nice wooden benches with name plates on them. Great benches. But...the contract says the bench is permanent... Care to guess how many times the site carpenters have to repair the bench before it costs more than the fundraiser ever made?
nicholas nolan 7 hours ago
Reminds me of Leave a Legacy at Epcot. It was these little metal plates laser engraved with names and family photos. You walked past these memorial wall looking monumnets as you entered the park. They tore them down a few years ago, and ended up setting them up outside the entrance after outrage from the people that bought their spot.
#17
The Ring doorbell Super Bowl ad. My whole family was shocked to realize what a surveillance system we built voluntarily to report our every movement to whomever can pay for the data.
tonitalksaboutit:
That one and the AI one were both shocking to me that they got ok'ed.
"Let AI do the work, so you have more time to do life" more like "hey ai can do your job, so we won't be needing you anymore".
M O'Connell 4 hours ago
Ironically I feel much better knowing Party officials in the PRC can watch my chinesium security cameras than a company like Ring selling everything to the highest bidder.
#18
Pepsi thinking Kendall Jenner handing a cop a Pepsi could solve racism. Someone in a boardroom approved that. Multiple people watched it and said "yes, this is good." That's the part that gets me.
Pferdchen 7 hours ago (edited)
They must not have realized that the proper solution to solving all the problems in the world is to "Buy the world a coke" Before you downvote me, this is in reference to a 1970s ad campaign featuring the song "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing." Surprisingly, I didn't get in any trouble (just a little talk) for convincing my elementary school classmates to include "Coke Is" when we sang the song for all of the parents 🤣
#19
Andrew Windsor deciding to, unprompted, an absolute car crash interview about early epstein allegations. Saying he couldn't sweat and was at pizza express at the time etc. You could practically hear the muffled screams of his PR manager from whatever cupboard they had been stuffed into.
#20
I was a manager at Cabelas, and they got the idea to change the music in the store to nature sounds. They spent over $1 million on this project. The week it launched, I have never seen such an overwhelming negative response from our customers. Multiple people threatened to cut up their cards and never return. While I get the sentiment, some of the tracks sounded like a poorly maintained car rather than an animal. It was changed within two weeks.
PracticalCandy:
I worked at Ikea in the US and during 2020/2021 they changed the music to this awful slow elevator musick. The company posted multiple articles in the internal website and newsletters explaining the decision to coworkers. Apparently it was based on research regarding music with slower beats making customers slow down and spend more time shopping, thereby spending more money per visit. I may be misremember the exact reasoning given it was years ago. Anyhow, the coworkers, myself included, HATED it. There weren't very many tracks and it just drilled into our brains and was obnoxious, but also made us tired. So many people complained on the internal comment sections. Corporate kept trying to defend their decision, but overtime (like 1-2 years) they switched back to the prior style of music.
Oh, and to make matters worse, at closing time they put on music with faster beats to hurry customers up to leave. It was the only time coworkers weren't complaining about the music. The music was changed for the whole country and was controlled by Corporate. However, my dept had control of the master and individual volume controls, so we just lowered it in the office spaces to save our sanity as much as possible without HR noticing.
Vivian McBride 5 hours ago
Ever had to listen to Christmas music ad nauseum while working retail?
#21
Gerald Ratner, boss of Ratners jewelers saying the stuff his company sold was trash. Watch him ruin his own company
DeliciousPangolin:
Ratner got fired, but the company just changed it's name and is still one of the biggest jewellery retailers in the world. They own pretty much every mall jewellery store in the English-speaking world. Even Ratner recovered after a while. People pay him to speak about the experience.
#22
Years ago, my husband worked for Nokia. The job market was terribly unstable at the time, and they promised right and left that no changes were coming. It would be business as usual. Fast-forward to several weeks before Christmas, and they handed out their holiday gifts. It was a nice fleece blanket with Nokia prominently embroidered on the side. This was followed by the surprise announcement that the plant would be shut down and relocated to Mexico within two months. They would start staggered layoffs beginning on the first of the year. Most of the first shift took their blankets, wrapped them around themselves, and huddled together under the work stations. They were practicing for their new life of unemployment in a horrible job market. Management was not amused. The second shift didn't get their blanket until quitting time and were not alowed to open them in the facility. As a special touch, the staggered layoffs were a hostage situation. They offered generous compensation packages, but you had to stay until you were released. You wouldn't receive your benefit if you left early. That made job hunting nearly impossible.
Still, employees huddling under their workstations to make a point was funny. They were shivering, holding out coffee cups for donations, making signs about what they would do for help. They made an absolutely beloved spectacle.
#23
The LifeLock CEO putting his social security number on a billboard.
#24
The old CEO of BP with the worst quote of all time after the Deepwater Horizon disaster. He said something like “I want my life back.” Well he got his wish because I think he got canned not long after.
Conscious_Abies4577:
We studied the Deepwater Horizon disaster in my Crisis Communications class— spent an entire week dissecting the CEO and the company’s initial responses. Absolutely ridiculous failure in communication at all levels
Con O Cuinn 15 hours ago
I mixed this up with the submarine guy, I thought canned was a pun at first
#25
SUBWAY!!! Someone noticed that their sub measured 11 inches instead of 12 inches and took a picture
Anyone with half a brain knew all they had to do was do a $4.58 footlong Friday (thats what 11/12ths of the $5 footlong would have been) while also saying in the ad that they would do better QA to make sure the sandwiches were the correct size.
What did they do????....... Footlong is not intended to be a unit of measurment....... .
rividz:
It's wild how 20 years ago everyone was Eating Fresh and now in 2026 no one wants a fifteen dollar donut bread soy frozen chicken sandwich.
ActualWhiterabbit:
Really it was just the store being lazy and not setting up the bread right. But for manufacturers it was worse because they asked the smallest plant that made like 30 bread sticks a day on how to verify they were all within spec and then apply that to my plants when even the medium plants made more in one day than they do a week.
Subway just freaks out over nothing always. The ADA scandal resulting from people not realizing ingredients can be used for multiple things caused them to rush a new recipe for their white and wheat breads with very little testing. But after they learned what dough conditioners were they just added salt because that makes bread taste better and most of our other clients had 3-4x as much salt per batch. But all the other places that used ADA just ignored it.
Freddy M. (He/Him) 14 hours ago
Reminds me of the "boneless wings doesn't mean they'll be boneless" debacle. Of course, the courts sided with the company
#26
Electrolux offering a free trip with every new vacuum sold. The trip was worth much more than the vacuum and people were buying them like crazy almost bankruptcy the company.
Ace 14 hours ago (edited)
It was Hoover, in the UK. They offered two return flights to the US, worth around £600, to anyone who spent more than £100 on Hoover products. They thought that not many people would take them up on it, they were very wrong. They then tried to back out of it, refused to honour the offer, caused so much damage both to their finances and their reputation that they never recovered and the business was eventually sold to a competitor.
#27
DiGiorno responded to a Twitter hashtag, #WhyIStayed, with "You had pizza", not realizing that it was about people staying in toxic relationships.
ussrowe:
I remember a fashion company tweeting about their footware while "boots on the ground" was trending because of military action in Syria. I looked it up and it was Kenneth Cole in 2013.
Con O Cuinn 15 hours ago
I remember a woman replying to DiGiorno saying, "well, that's better than my reasons." F*****g dark man
#28
Kevin Spacey thinking he could escape very serious and troubling accusations by coming out as gay. Not sure what the thought process was on that one. .
ThisistheHoneyBadger:
And also releasing random videos as his character from House of Cards. Just bizarre to me.
#29
Target's CEO.
Dude took over in 2014, after Target's spectacular failure in Canada. He managed to wrap that up, and lead Target to a decade of incredible success as a business and brand.
Then he failed to read the room so hard and backed of the DEI stuff that he used to champion, and tanked so hard his own total comp as CEO tells the tale. Guy made 77 million dollars for himself in 2020. By 2024, his take home as CEO was less than 10 million. Replaced this year.
KHSebastian:
I'll never really understand this one. Target was a brand popular with a particular audience. They specifically decided to target an audience that actively disliked them instead. Which means they alienated the audience that liked them, to try and court an audience that already hated them and wouldn't stop.
It'd be like Ford throwing blue collar people under the bus and trying to get anti ICE protestors and computer programmers to be the target audience for their trucks.
#30
Papa John gets fired from Papa John's for saying the n word.
It gets better because you're probably heard that but not what actually happened.
He was complaining in a meeting that they were getting criticized heavily for their wording in (i think) an ad. And he goes "its not like we said..." and said it.
The execs leaked it because they had been looking for a reason to get rid of him.
#31
The Oregon town whose police department planned a Halloween event called “Hide and Seek with a Cop.”
It was cancelled.
#32
Pierre Poilievre from Canada's Convervative party campaigned on the platform of making groceries and housing more affordable, meanwhile his campaign manager ran a PR firm that represented the companies that are most actively making groceries and housing unaffordable.
#33
Nokia put out the N-Gage, an ahead-of-its-time gaming/phone hybrid and debuted it at the annual E3 convention.
For one, you had to remove the battery to swap games. Also, to talk on it as a phone you had to turn it sideways - like holding a taco meat-side toward your ear.
But PR-wise, they had a big presentation where a bikini-clad girl had the N-Gage’s price painted on her stomach: 299, which was more than most though reasonable. Also, her belly-button made it look like it read 2.99.
The Goo King 8 hours ago
If you have to use t**s to sell your product, it's probably not a very good product. This works remarkably well for games, films and most other things.
#34
Janet Jackson claiming she believed Kamala Harris was lying about being half black during an interview with The Guardian (months before the '24 election).
Then doubling down when someone claiming to be her PR rep said he was fired because he issued a statement of apology on Janet's behalf.
#35
The Gillette "do better, men" commercial was kind of a headscratcher. Like, you overwhelmingly sell products to men. Contrary to their own assessment most of the time, men are extremely fragile, insecure, and hypersensitive to criticism. What did you think was going to happen?
I don't think the premise was wrong (it's probably more relevant now than ever, really) but, like, what was the business rationale there? Lol.
Con O Cuinn 15 hours ago
What was crazy was that they put out a brilliant ad in India at the same time highlighting positive masculinity. Basically the same message but delivered completely differently.
#36
The WiFi speaker company Sonos released a new app months before it was ready, which lost a ton of basic features that the previous app had - we're talking really basic stuff here like the ability to skip tracks or edit your play queue.
It's been I think about 18 months now and Android users have only just got something that resembles the original app in terms of functionality.
The worst thing about the whole debacle was once you'd updated to the new app there was no way of going back to the old one.
Their CEO resigned but it'll take a long time for the company to recover its reputation.
#37
I remember Malaysian Airlines doing a bucket list campaign. After losing two planes and several hundred people.
#38
That ozempic ad during the super bowl that was complaining about vanity Healthcare being only for the rich. To sell a subscription vanity Healthcare service that only the rich can afford.
Bookworm 15 hours ago (edited)
It's actually for diabetes so I disagree with calling it a vanity healthcare service. When used for it's intended purpose it's a life saving medication. (And often covered by insurance, even government programs like Medicare/Medicaid). I say this as someone who has lost loved ones to diabetes. Yes it lets you lose weight because it changes how your digestive system works. Since I keep hearing obesity is an epidemic it's crazy to me that it's not also authorized for weight loss as an approved use. It's not like you can just take a shot and eat like normal. You have to change your lifestyle, including exercise and the food you eat, for this to be effective. Stop diminishing the good of this med just because some people are misusing it.
#39
Snapple tried to bring the largest popsicle in the world to NYC in June and it melted before it got off the truck.
#40
Barbara Streisand had some PR go so horribly wrong that the named the outcome after her. “Streisand effect”.
Bookworm 15 hours ago
Wow way to not provide any pertinent information. The Streisand effect is when an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information results in increasing public awareness of the info. It stems from a failed lawsuit to suppress publication of a photo showing her home. (Photo was taken to document coastal erosion and not actually trying to photograph her home). Link below.
#41
Joss Whedon Vulture interview. What was his PR team thinking?
Bill Swallow 1 hour ago
Beats me. Why don't you tell us the details, for those who don't memorize meaningless celebrity trivia?
#42
Cardi B doing a campaign for the McDonalds Offset Meal. She should've went with Burger King so they could make the WAPer - the extra juicy burger.
#43
I used to work for Lowe's and on an internal company broadcast one of the BIG big shots said how time small size of the newest Dewalt tool set would be a great fit for our Latino customers and their smaller hands.
Amazingly he still works there.
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What do you think ?
Lee Gilliland 15 hours ago
My two favorites are the US Navy using The Village People's "In the Navy" as a recruiting song back when they couldn't take guys and Coca-Cola's deciding not to change their name in China when they were trying to establish a new market. Coca-Cola means "bite the wax tadpole" in Chinese.
Vix Spiderthrust 4 hours ago
I love the story - possibly apocryphal - that the "Coke adds life!" campaign got mixed results in China because it was translated as "Coke brings your ancestors back from the grave"
Load More Replies...
Luke || Kira (he/she) 4 hours ago
Another one in this category. Yesterday, Tumblr (the social network) rolled an update where every reblog basically became its own post with its own like/reblog count, so similar to Twitter. I've NEVER seen such amount of concentrated rage before, and it was warranted since the update indeed ruined the very tenet of Tumblr's appeal. The update lasted a grand total of 18 hours.
ginger 1 hour ago
omg it went away? I havent even checked Tumblr since that happened it pissed me off
Load More Replies...
TotallyNOTAFox 7 hours ago (edited)
I think if we look at the movie- and videogames industry we could get a whole article just about that. "This movie is not for men! - Why do men not watch our movie?"; "Don't like it, don't buy it - Share value fell by 50%"; "We make games / movies for a modern audience - It's a VERY small audience"; "Player numbers aren't important! - Turns out they infact were important"
Lee Gilliland 15 hours ago
My two favorites are the US Navy using The Village People's "In the Navy" as a recruiting song back when they couldn't take guys and Coca-Cola's deciding not to change their name in China when they were trying to establish a new market. Coca-Cola means "bite the wax tadpole" in Chinese.
Vix Spiderthrust 4 hours ago
I love the story - possibly apocryphal - that the "Coke adds life!" campaign got mixed results in China because it was translated as "Coke brings your ancestors back from the grave"
Load More Replies... Luke || Kira (he/she) 4 hours ago
Another one in this category. Yesterday, Tumblr (the social network) rolled an update where every reblog basically became its own post with its own like/reblog count, so similar to Twitter. I've NEVER seen such amount of concentrated rage before, and it was warranted since the update indeed ruined the very tenet of Tumblr's appeal. The update lasted a grand total of 18 hours.
ginger 1 hour ago
omg it went away? I havent even checked Tumblr since that happened it pissed me off
Load More Replies... TotallyNOTAFox 7 hours ago (edited)
I think if we look at the movie- and videogames industry we could get a whole article just about that. "This movie is not for men! - Why do men not watch our movie?"; "Don't like it, don't buy it - Share value fell by 50%"; "We make games / movies for a modern audience - It's a VERY small audience"; "Player numbers aren't important! - Turns out they infact were important"
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