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For companies and celebrities, their reputations mean everything. A bad reputation means less brand loyalty, fewer returning customers or job opportunities, and much less profit. No matter who you are, sooner or later, you’ll make mistakes. Some will be much bigger than others. It’s how you handle them that shows your true values and character.
PR is all about persuasion, but it can backfire immensely. We’re featuring some of the worst public relations nightmares in history that showed just how out-of-touch some corporations and public figures were. Scroll down for a crash course in what not to do.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Definitely not the biggest in history but the biggest one the effected me personally. I worked at a hospital that had a history of giving 2% raises and a modest Christmas bonus every Christmas. One year they announced that they weren’t doing either. But they made a big production about the the board members and CEO also weren’t getting a bonus. (But they did get a raise.) It’s nonsense to compare someone making $200k a year and not getting a bonus to someone making $25k (CNAs) when they depend on that money to buy their kids Christmas. The entire hospital staff was pissed. They were already not getting paid competitively compared to other nearby hospitals. A large amount of staff quit as a result causing the hospital to have to hire contract nurses at twice the pay, which resulted in pissing off the staff that stayed. Which began exodus part two. They ended up having to do across the board raises which cost more than just giving the raises and bonuses in the first place.
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#2
When Nike tried to market a special St Paddy's day themed sneaker, the "Black and Tan" without realizing what that phrase actually meant (a violent British paramilitary unit that tormented the Irish).
#3
The CEO of BP saying he wants "his life back" during one of the largest oil spills in huma history.
Your reputation as a company or public figure is fragile. It takes years to build up a positive reputation. However, a handful of missteps can ruin all the effort you’ve put in. Your message and how you deliver it can end up under the microscope almost instantly if it goes viral on social media.
According to PR Lab, companies that weather PR crises prepare for them before anything goes wrong. “They already knew who would respond, what the message would say, and who could make decisions fast. Strong crisis communications separates brands that recover from those that collapse.”
On the flip side, the brands that suffer the most negative consequences are those that make up excuses, blame others, or take too long to respond.
Some of the trickiest parts of PR are not being able to control how the media will cover your news, how bad timing might distort your message, and how there’s always the potential for negative publicity.
#4
The Nestle baby formula scandal. Nestle began marketing their baby formula as healthier alternative to breast feeding to women in developing countries. This led to several problems. First, many of the women did not have access to clean drinking water. This led to babies drinking formula laced with impurities. Second, since many of the women came from a poor economic background they would use less formula than recommend in order to make the can last longer. This led to malnutrition among babies. Third, the mothers did not have the means or the knowledge to properly sanitize baby bottles. This led to a spread of disease among babies. All of these factors led to a higher infant mortality rate. Estimates show that formula fed babies in these countries were 6 to 25 times more likely to lose their lives because of diarrhea and 4 times more likely to lose their lives because of pneumonia when compared to breast fed babies. In response a boycott was launched in the US and Europe.
Biofish23 13 hours ago
This wasn't an unforeseen mistake, it was pure evil! They used aggressive and deceptive marketing targeted specifically at mothers they knew would be better off breastfeeding. They had sales women dress as nurses, and handed out just enough free samples to last until the mothers milk dried up. They KNEW babies would die, and they did it anyway.
#5
Not exactly a backfire but I can't believe no one has mentioned Justine Sacco. She worked as some kind of PR person for some big company. Right before getting on a transatlantic flight to Africa, she tweeted a joke in rather poor taste about not getting AIDS because she's white. During the next several hours, completely unknown to her, the internet unleashed an epic hate mob. She was totally disgraced and fired from her job, and she had no idea until she landed.
#6
In 2008, Dr. Pepper announced that they would give out one can of Dr. Pepper for free (edit: to every American citizen) if Guns N' Roses manages to release their Chinese Democracy album by the end of that year. The album came out, Dr. Pepper wasn't able to deliver.
In a nutshell, public relations nightmares are crises that damage the reputation of a brand, company, or person. They can be related to scandals, failed products, poor decisions, bad customer experiences, or offensive behaviors. If left unchecked, negative attention online can feed on itself and result in long-term damage to your brand.
In a crisis, your focus should be on immediate transparency, honest accountability, and sustained action to show that you’ve changed.
PR Lab suggests that when dealing with a public relations disaster and restoring your reputation, you should:
- Directly own up to the mistake with genuine empathy within the first hour of the crisis going public
- Assess the damage and contain the crisis within the first 24 to 48 hours
- Talk to affected customers, employees, and investors, focus on internal alignment, and reset your brand’s culture within the first 2 to 7 days
- Focus on rebuilding trust through authenticity, credibility, and genuine change in the first 4 weeks after the crisis goes public
- Commit to long-term monitoring, measurement, and prevention for the first 1 to 12+ months
“Brands that share honest progress updates publicly sustain their gains twice as long as companies that go quiet after initial damage control.”
#8
Ten Cent Beer Night. The Cleveland Indians needed more people in seats so they offered bottomless beer cups at a dime a piece. And they did this on a night when the Indians were playing their franchise rivals.
If you immediately see a million ways that this can go wrong, congratulations, you're smarter than the idiots who orchestrated this legendary fiasco.
#9
Osborne Computer Company.
look up the osborne effect. everytime they released a computer they would instantly start talking about how the next one would be so much better.
in the end everyone heard this and decided not to buy the current one and wait for the new one that had all these amazing promises... they went bankrupt.
Which of these public relations disasters was the worst of the bunch, in your opinion? What have been the biggest PR sins that you’ve personally seen companies or celebrities commit?
What, from your perspective, lies at the core of building a genuine, authentic, positive reputation in the business or entertainment industry?
What are some brands that you trust the most and the least, and why?
Share your thoughts with everyone in the comments.
#10
IPhone 4 antenna scandal where Steve Jobs replied "Just avoid holding it that way".
#11
The Streisand Effect. In the 2000s, the website Pictopia put up an aerial picture of Barbra Streisand's mansion. No one really cared except Barbra, who sued them for millions because she didn't want people to know where she lived. The lawsuit drew attention to the photo, resulting in way more people seeing where she lived than if she had just left well enough alone.
John Dilligaf 13 hours ago
and to top it all off Barbra Streisand's mansion wasn't even the intended subject of the photograph. . They were taking photos of the California coastline for some environmental study and Streisand's house just happened to be in it. Before she made a fuss about it fewer than 10 people had viewed the photo, afterwards millions of people visited the website to view the photo.
#12
Hoover Free Flights
After offering free European Flights when spending over £100, Hoover expanded this to some US locations (including Orlando). These US flights were worth up to 7 times more than the appliances purchased to claim the free flights. It is estimated to have cost Hoover around £50million.
I did get to goto Disney World as a kid because of this as my parents needed new appliances after an unfortunate house fire forcing the necessity of new appliances, and years later my parents did tell me about the amount of phoning they had to do to get Hoover to honour the promotion. IIRC At its height Hoover had to charter flights just for promo tickets out to the US.
#13
When two white women in TX decided to name their PR firm 'Strange Fruit’ because they thought it was cute. They knew that it was also the name of a popular Billie Holiday song about lynching, but thought that the song had long faded out of public consciousness. It had not and Twitter reminded them about it.
#14
JCPenney getting rid of coupons, and having “an every day low price”.
2dhqnhfw48 14 hours ago
I still don’t understand this one. The new policy just made sense. Take Kohl’s. Coupons, Kohl’s cash, sales, discounts. I can’t shop there. I don’t know how.
#15
Sometimes hosting an Olympics can be a great PR move that can backfire.
A dictator in South Korea tried to host an Olympics in order to make his regime look good, but it just brought more international attention to the brutality of the regime and in the end the dictator had to step down right before the Summer Olympics in 1988, held in Seoul.
North Korea hosted World Youth Festival next year in Pyoungyang in a desperate attempt to look good because Summer Olympics revealed South Korea to be a free and rich country to the world. Well, this North Korean PR move also backfired, because a South Korean student sneaked in to participate in the festival and even made a public speech which North Korea broadcasted. The regime thought it was ok to broadcast that because the student was critical of the South Korean government and spoke of peace and unification, but what North Korean people saw was a well fed student from the enemy country speaking freely in a casual dress.
#16
Roy Moore’s wife trying to prove they weren’t anti-semites by saying “our lawyer is a Jew”.
nottheactualphoto 13 hours ago
I don't know who Roy Moore is, but let's get it straight that "Jew" is not a slur.
#17
The Ratner effect. Gerald Ratner was a king in jewelry in the 80s in the UK. He made a speech effectively denigrating a few of his company's products, and overnight the company share price tanked half a billion pounds.
#18
LeBron James's "The Decision" was a pretty big PR disaster at the time.
For those who are unaware, LeBron James, one of the best basketball players ever, was born in Akron, OH and ended up being drafted by the Cleveland Cavaliers, so he was seen as a "hometown hero."
After playing for the team for several years, his contract expired and he entered a free agency period. There was a ton of speculation about whether he would re-sign with the Cavaliers or leave town to play for another team. He decided to host a televised one-hour special where he would announce his decision at the end.
Most people assumed he'd be re-signing with the Cavs, since it would be totally crazy to go on live TV just to tell his hometown fans he was done playing for them, right? Well, that's actually exactly what he did. At the end of the hour he declared he'd be "taking his talents to South Beach" to play for the Miami Heat.
It drew a huge amount of blowback; some Cleveland fans infamously set their LeBron James jerseys on fire in the streets, while many fans around the league chastised him for what they saw as such a tacky boneheaded, self-centered move. It also drew criticism because the Miami Heat made some moves the same offseason, so it meant three of the best players in the league would now be on the same team and it seemed like a foregone conclusion that they would win the championship.
A lot of basketball fans hated him for years after that incident, and some still do to this day.
#19
Greenpeace and the Nazca lines
While promoting clean energy and environment awareness, they laid out banners near Nazca Lines ruining the geoglyph made by the indigenous people about a thousand years ago.
#20
Little late to the party but A&W's foray into burger making comes to mind. A&W released a third pounder burger to compete with the McDonalds quarter pounder. Unfortunately the average person thought 1/3 was smaller than 1/4 because 4 is bigger than 3....This caused people to think the A&W burger was a ripoff when it was actually the better deal.
#21
I wouldn't say the biggest, but one of my favorites in terms of bad timing was the release of Toyota's new slogan "Moving forward" just before they had to do a massive recall on vehicles whose breaks would randomly stop working.
#22
I think it was pepsi who had a marketing campaign that you would collect things from their products and give them back in return for free things. in the promotion video, they showed a figther jet with the text 10.000.000 (or so). they thought nobody would be able to collect that much stuff. one man found a loophole which would enable him to get 10.000.000 in this fictional currency while following the rules. pepsi of course wasn't able to give him a jet, so they where like ''dude. that was just a joke''. the customer then goes on for several years with lawsuits for extreme false advertisement.
#23
In 2010 Gap tried to redesign their logo. It was not well received since it I was such a lame departure from a logo that still felt iconic. In response to the negative feedback Gap decided to “crowdsource” a new logo and allow submissions from the community with NO compensation involved. The design community flipped out (as a project like this could easily be $100,000+). Gap apologized, ended the crowdsourcing and went back to the old logo.
#24
Mexican Avocados. Company advertises they are organic from Mexico, customers in the US realize they are from Mexico and associate that with lower quality, buy different Avocados.
#25
Here in the UK, the Conservative Party's post-Brexit General Election campaign.
The Tories called for the election in hopes of solidifying their significant polling majority at the time, and thereby legitimising Theresa May's position as Prime Minister. But for some reason, they decided from the start that their win was a foregone conclusion, and put next to no effort into their actual campaigning.
They did it so badly, in fact, that they actually *lost* enough Parliament seats that they no longer had the ruling majority, and had to resort to a coalition with the fundamentalist DUP to break the resulting hung Parliament and retain power.
#26
The Xbox One announcement was pretty horrendous. Not the worst in history perhaps but it led them to fall behind PlayStation sales instantly and even now with a console that's just as good if not better than the PS4 the damage still shows.
#27
Calling half the country "Irredeemable deplorables" cost the democrats the election and their clumsy attempts to walk it back only made the matter worse.
Rather than shaming people into not voting for Trump it became a badge of honor and an anthem that attracted even more people to Trump's camp.
#28
In Spanish, "No va" means "It doesn't go."
So imagine Chevrolet's luck when they marketed the Chevy Nova in Latin America.
#29
About 6 years ago, ocean marketing I believe was the name of the company. They marketed some madcatz type Xbox controller accessory, some guy wanted to return it or something like that and the guy that ran the marketing firm started mocking him and acting like a jerk. At one point he is bragging about all his friends in high places and mentions the company penny arcade, and their convention PAX. the guy that wanted the refund emailed one of the main guys at penny arcade and CCs him into the email chain. Subsequently the company were kicked out of pax, fired from the marketing contact and were mocked and berated by gaming news sites. If I remember the guy went full on damage control and claimed it wasn't him blah blah blah, deleted the social media accounts of his company and personal one, and I think rebranded a few times to throw off the stink surrounding him.
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Mrreoww 4 hours ago
There was some Australian company (can’t remember the name) that made a video for marketing purposes. The video depicted a bunch of well-known people sitting at a table and having lunch, and there was even someone dressed as the Indian god Ganesha. The PR crisis? Ganesha was eating meat. In India, vegetarianism is practiced widely, and gods and goddesses are never offered meat (there are 1 or two temples tha do this, but they’re seen as controversial and are very rare). Indians were offended and slightly outraged by the video.
Mrreoww 4 hours ago (edited)
Also, perhaps a sadder one. Fabindia (clothing brand) released a collection for Diwali (Hindu festival) except the name was Jashn-e-rivaz. The style of the name came from Muslim culture (Jashn-e-rivaz is not an Hindu name) and there were other elements in the advertisements for this brand that made Hindus see Fabindia as anti-Hindu. I think it was just trying to promote cultural unity and unite Hindus and Muslims. I think there was even a video of two women celebrating Diwali together (scandalous /s) but I may be mixing up two things.
Load More Replies... Mrreoww 4 hours ago
There was some Australian company (can’t remember the name) that made a video for marketing purposes. The video depicted a bunch of well-known people sitting at a table and having lunch, and there was even someone dressed as the Indian god Ganesha. The PR crisis? Ganesha was eating meat. In India, vegetarianism is practiced widely, and gods and goddesses are never offered meat (there are 1 or two temples tha do this, but they’re seen as controversial and are very rare). Indians were offended and slightly outraged by the video.
Mrreoww 4 hours ago (edited)
Also, perhaps a sadder one. Fabindia (clothing brand) released a collection for Diwali (Hindu festival) except the name was Jashn-e-rivaz. The style of the name came from Muslim culture (Jashn-e-rivaz is not an Hindu name) and there were other elements in the advertisements for this brand that made Hindus see Fabindia as anti-Hindu. I think it was just trying to promote cultural unity and unite Hindus and Muslims. I think there was even a video of two women celebrating Diwali together (scandalous /s) but I may be mixing up two things.
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