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.
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Racism sexism and fat shaming all in the top 5, and all aimed at women.... says a lot!
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.
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.
I thought this was a clip from the "Blurred Lines" music video... same message tho
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.”
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.
Just shows how out of touch (with reality ironically) these guys really are!!
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.”
These were sent to members of the press as part of a press package. They immediately asked for the back. Possession is illegal in most states. In some states, shipping is illegal.
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.
Consider at the time there was a sensible social issue about immigrants trying to cross the Channel by jumping on the back of trucks while they were waiting for boarding in France and Belgium. It was a risky move for the stowaways (some tried to hitch a ride in a refrigerated truck and died of hypothermia, some were killed while jumping on the moving trucks, or tried to hang to the underside of the trailer and were crushed when falling under the wheels). It was a real problem for truckers, who could be arrested and tried for aiding illegal immigration or even for human trafficking, despite them not being complicit or even aware of the presence of stowaways. It was also common to access the cargo space by cutting through the trailer side, en expensive damage, and often whatever cargo was inside was spoiled (such as foodstuff being eaten or thrown out to aid other crossers, crates used as toilets or opened to look for stuff to steal).
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.
I think this could well have been a provocative joke that was never intended to discriminate against women, but the exact opposite. After all, the post takes this outdated phrase and reinterprets it in a positive way. I think it's hard to tell exactly what was meant. But it's often very easy to say that something was meant to be sexist.
This happened 4 years after the bombing, the message was well intended but poorly worded. It is very common to brag about "surviving" a marathon among runners, they failed to connect the tone of the message with the past of the specific event. They quickly apologized and admitted the mistake.
Y’all saying genterfication are good either don’t know what it is, or are a******s. The issue is that after these people come and “make places better” the poor people can’t afford to live there anymore, food rent, it all becomes to expensive and people are forced to move and it is truly f****d up.
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.
I don't think they intended to be malicious.....would it have had a different reaction of it had said 'son'? When I was a child, I was asked to do the washing up....it's just chores that children do. But this is just my opinion.....not looking to start any arguments :)
The icecream impregnated her? The icecream gets you laid? I'm more offended by the ad not making sense than the religious mockery tbh
I'm more annoyed by the marketing industry's tendency to sexualize food. I find that disgusting. I don't want to think of sex when I'm eating ice cream.
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This one reminds me a bit of the "shock ads" by Bennetton in the 90s. They did their fair share of over-the-top posters like bloody bullet-riddled shirts or dying AIDS patients, but the one that nearly got them banned in Italy was of a priest and a nun kissing.
Those shock ads were powerful social messages though, very needed at the time. Their campaigns were curated by Oliviero Toscani, a world-class photographer very involved in spreading social awareness on critical social issues. His campaigns focused the public discussion on the struggle for racial equality, fight against homophobia, action against AIDS, social damage from organized crime, opposition to executions for prisoners, support of body positivism, opening to gay adoptions, promotion of safe sex, criticism against the Catholic Church. Notwithstanding the commercial use made by Benetton of the photos, the collaboration allowed furthering the debate on those critical issue in a way nothing before could.
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Not to be “that” person but it’s still not okay to make fun of people because of their likes or beliefs
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It's gelato, not ice cream you fukcing savage. And I can see why an ad with a nun being immaculately impregnated by really good gelato might raise some eyebrows in Italy lol
Incarnation=Jesus's conception. Immaculate conception=Mary's conception without sin
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Immaculate conception refers to Mary'a conception being free of original sin and not her conception with Jesus. But the Apocrypha has that Mary's parents Anne and Joachim (I wish more people knew Jesus' granddaddy was named Joachim) were infertile and conceived without sexual intercourse. Mary's conception and the concept of personal sin vs original sin was a huge debate in the Middle Ages as the belief was that sex was inherently sinful ergo no conception via sex could not have sin attached. Hence the idea that Mary's parents divinely conceived a child without sex. However that is not a widespread belief and IIRC the story of Anne and Joachim only appears in the Gospel of James. So... it's debatably not wrong to refer to immaculate conception as conception without sex.
Oh come on - religion deserves all the mocking it gets AND MORE!
Isn't that entire religion founded on the idea of a virgin getting pregnant though?
No it's founded on a a man claiming to be God dying and rising from the dead
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Whats wrong with religious mockery? If you are an adult an believe in imaginary friends you signned yourself up for that big time little fairy in the woods. Though this is a crappy ad...
Do you believe that you have no free will? That you are completely determined by the randomness of quantum mechanics, that the only difference between yourself and an orange is completely determined by chemical composition?
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Mocking religion is fine....they killed millions of people for their imaginary friends honour
All religions, all countries, have bad people and good people. Also, back in history people did some crazy stuff. Not trying to condone what they did, of course it was wrong but it's not all Christians faults. That does not make mocking any religion okay. Not Christian or Islam or anything. Just like mocking people for being fat or skinny or disabled is not okay.
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"religious mockery"? Where did this happen? I'm feeling the need for some tourism...
I actually think this is really clever. So what if religion gets a little kick in the nuts occasionally.
Presumably this was banned in Italy which makes sense. If this ad was in Britain no one would even blink.
As anyone commenting here checked that she's supposed to be pregnant and not just indulgent?
the tagline says "immaculately conceived", so yes she is supposed to be pregnant
Load More Replies... So she got knocked up by icecream? Good thing I'm lactose intolerant and have not baby bedroom anymore.
is this supposed to be, she eats the ice cream then gets laid, or "this is what free people eat" kinda thing? this is confusing.
i meant she eats the ice cream, men think shes all that, she gets laid.
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To all the people that reported my post and made the automated system ban me (just for saying religion should be mocked) - just wanted to to say hello, and nice try
ads banned for religious mockery? Aww, did some institution get their feelings hurt?
People like to make fun of Christianity a lot… but what if this ad was doing the same thing but with Islam?
How many Christian’s do you know that we’re recipients of hate crimes
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Religion deserves to be mocked as it has no place in modern society and we would be better off if it didn't exist at all
You don't have to like Christianity but that does not give you a right to mock it and make fun of it. Christians do a lot of good things. Our church donated money and clothes and personal care items to Ukraine numerous times. We help people who are financially struggling. That's like me mocking aethism (sorry if I spelled it wrong). It's your choice and I'm fine with that. But please don't mock other Christians or people of any other religion. It's just not right and in this day and age I think we can all agree that mocking almost anyone or anything is unacceptable
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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.
Some of these came down to bad phrasing. Others were just plain tone deaf.
Note how the bad things these companies actually do that harm people are ignored while people do mental gymnastics to find racism and sexism in their ads. This is exactly why big business appropriated the left and defanged legitimate criticism.
Some of these came down to bad phrasing. Others were just plain tone deaf.
Note how the bad things these companies actually do that harm people are ignored while people do mental gymnastics to find racism and sexism in their ads. This is exactly why big business appropriated the left and defanged legitimate criticism.
