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23 PR Disasters That Became Absolute Nightmares For Everyone Involved
When you become well-known, whether as a company or a celebrity, sooner or later you’re going to end up in the public eye. And with that comes opinions, both good and bad. Naturally, nobody wants the bad ones, because a damaged reputation can cost money, opportunities, and sometimes even everything you’ve worked for.
Redditors across different threads asked people to share what they think are the worst PR disasters of all time, and there was no shortage of answers. We’ve rounded up some of the most interesting ones below, so scroll down to read them, and if you think any other cases deserve a mention, drop them in the comments.
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#1
The Segway. They played it coy, dropped hints about this revolutionary new technology and how blown away we'd be, and how future cities would be redesigned from the ground up around this incredible breakthrough - an innovation touched by god.
It was a scooter. We could all see it was a scooter. It doesn't hover, or make your teeth whiter while you sleep. Just a scooter.
That’s all what I yam 1 hour ago
James Heselden bought Segway, Inc on Christmas Day of 2009. He had owned the company for only nine months at the time of his accidental death while using a Segway. When he reversed the Segway to allow a dog walker to get past him, he fell from a nearby cliff. (Wikipedia, Jimi Heselden)
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#2
The one that irritated me the most was when Bank of America had one of their customers arrested for inquiring about a questionable check. The guy had made a transaction with someone on craigslist and was a little suspicious about the check he got, so he took it into his local branch to ask if it was legit. The teller held it for a bit, then said, "yeah, go ahead and sign it." Once he signed it they told him he was guilty of passing a bad check and arrested him.
Savannah greenleaf 8 minutes ago
It's bank of America this sounds about right. I believe they have had several class action lawsuits against them. I think they were recently ordered to pay out a settlement to victims of J Epstein.
#3
VWs emissions scandal. CEO resignation, huge drop in market value and sales, court cases, compensation claims....
#4
Anybody else remember the olean/olestra "Wow" potato chips back in the 90s? The idea was that the olean in the chips would prevent your body from absorbing some of the fat and calories, so you could eat the chips and not put on weight as fast. They eventually had to put a little disclaimer on the bag that mentioned they could cause "oily discharge". They gave a lot of people diarrhea and ruined a lot underwear.
That’s all what I yam 50 minutes ago
I was interested so I looked it up. Olestra passes through the gastrointestinal tract undigested without contributing calories or nutritive value to the diet. (Wikipedia, Olestra). A good-sized dose of Olestra has to go somewhere, namely, right through your digestive tract. (Science, Hybrid Biomolecules, Edible And Not)
#5
The disaster recovery official that spend a huge amount of time and emails worrying about what to wear on camera while hoards of people were losing their lives, trapped or living in squalor immediately after Hurricane Katrina.
BarBeeGirl 1 hour ago
The whole Katrina situation was badly mismanaged. People on top of rooftops for days with signs begging for help
#6
Sarah Palin being named as the Republican Vice Presidential Nominee for the year 2008. I said this last time this came up and I posted.
For those who were to young to be in tune to the political situation of the day. Senator's John McCain and Barak Obama were the nominee's, Obama picked BIden as his running mate and McCain decided to pick the (then unknown) Former Governor of Alaska, Mrs Palin. The News cycle tried to get to know her, tried to introduce her to the people who would be voting her, but it was just constant "wait, wut?" reactions as her "Foreign Policy Experiance" came off sounding like "I can see Russia from my house (Thank you Tina Fey/SNL).
Then there was a rather lengthy interview (or series) with Katie Couric, where Palin said "I love to read! It's Great!" and got stumped by the question "So what's the last thing you've read?"
And things just kept spiraling out of control until the Election day feed from McCain HQ looked like eight guys in suits quietly hiding from reality while Ted Nugent tried to get some energy in the room.
FlamingZombies 1 hour ago
And how could we forget the infamous interview she was giving while the guy was slaughtering turkeys in the background? Link below.
#7
Jesy Nelson's solo debut.
was so disasterous all the goodwill she had from Little Mix and her mental health work disappeared in basically 3 days.
GrumpyPancake:
I'm still so upset about her and how her whole solo thing started and immediately derailed. Especially bc I enjoyed the debut single, despite all the criticisms of it, and was looking forward to new music in that direction. The black girl cosplay tho, the blackfishing, girl why
#8
Ashlee Simpson's SNL debacle. She was not well and couldn't sing, as was depicted in her reality show. Nevertheless, she chose to show up and lip sync, the wrong track played, and humiliation ensued.
She kept going though. Her next album debuted at #1. She returned to SNL to sing for real, and did well, but people didn't talk about it much because it went well. She phased out of her commercial peak for unrelated reasons...I think she was just never poised to be a very big star for long. People still remember the incident and it does come up in interviews sometimes. Things turned out fine for her because she didn't blow the money she made and she's busy being a mom.
BarBeeGirl 1 hour ago
I saw this and it was hilarious! Once she realized what was happening, she gave up lip syncing and did a little jig. I literally watched with my mouth hanging open á la w*f?
#9
2006, then Senator George Allen referred to one of his assistants a certain name. He tried to play it off that he really didn't know what that name meant, or that it wasn't really meant to be racist, but no one bought it, and he lost reelection.
BarBeeGirl 1 hour ago
Had to look this one up — he called an African American “macca” which translates to “monkey” and apparently referred to his black football teammates using the n-word (altho he denied it). No wonder he lost
#10
DaBaby randomly being homophobic at the peak of his carreer, then having the worst response ever to a controversy like this where he said something like "my gay fans arent like that"
and then on top of the controversy his carreer was already kinda imploding because he was releasing the worst singles ever i think its pretty much impossible for him to recover he lost the opportunity to be the new ludacris the pop-rap feature guy.
#11
Adele cancelling her Vegas residency a day before. So like all these fans flew in from wherever and were literally staying at the hotel when the announcement was made. And then there were all the people who had made accomodations for the next three months afterward.
#13
Barcelona's stupid hashtag when Messi got busted avoiding taxes. Even their own fans weren't defending him. #WeAreAllMessi
#14
Ariana Granda licking doughnuts and saying she hates America…..
#15
Taylor Swift and her private jet usage. She says she rents it out to others. As if that makes it better.
Saddest_Lion 1 hour ago
After all of the problems she's had with stalkers, I don't blame her one bit for flying in a private jet. She's not perfect, but I feel that the amount of philanthropic work she does counterbalances alot of jet usage. She donates enough money to food banks to fund them for years
#16
The Chevy Nova. For some reason it just didn't sell well in Latin America. ("No va" means "doesn't go" in Spanish).
Bored Jellyfish 1 hour ago (edited)
This has been debunked. The Chevy Nova sold well in the Spanish-speaking markets of Mexico and Venezuela. [See Snopes com for more for a more in-depth explanation why the name didn’t affect its sales.]
#17
Paramore, when the Farro brothers left the band after the third album, Josh posted a rant online that personally attacked Hayley Williams as a diva, and more detrimentally, said the band was a fraud since Hayley was the only one signed to a label, and the rest of the group were just her employees.
While the initial damage control was pretty effective, especially an hour long MTV interview where Hayley and the remaining members explained the intricacies of the situation, the image of the band, especially among those who already saw them as "the ones with the Twilight song", was pretty bad.
Over time this has lessened, both albums released after the departure were met with great reviews, and Zach Farro rejoining the band indicated that maybe Josh' claims weren't as substantial as he claimed.
#18
Story time, this is a blast from that past. Guns N' Roses, biggest band in the world dissappears around 1993. Axl Rose returns having fired the entire old band, Slash etc, after being in hiding for 8 years. Has a guy looking like the Alien from Alien on rhythm and a dude with a KFC bucket on his head playing lead guitar. Same guy does a numchuck dance before his guitar solo slot. First North American show in 8 years, band no shows in Vancouver, riot, Axl's private jet still parked on the tarmac at LAX. show cancelled, police have to tear gas the downtown.
Tour goes on a few weeks, disaster VMA slot, Axl refuses to elaborate on whether a long awaited album will come out all, looks terrible and sounds out of breath. Axl then refused entry to nightclub in NYC because he was wearing animal fur. Sulks in his hotel room, no shows at Philly, second massive riot, millions in damages. Tour cancelled by Live Nation, Axl doesn't emerge for another 4 years.
#19
ARTPOP was pretty wack to live through. If she wasn't screaming at Perez Hilton to stop stalking her outside her apartment, she was melting down on Twitter about Katy and Madonna to promote a song with R Kelly.
#20
The Slap has turned out to be much bigger than I thought it would when it happened.
xandrenia:
This is truly one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen on live TV. Here we have a grown man getting up and slapping someone over an arguably offensive joke, screaming and cursing in his face, and nobody knew for a couple minutes whether it was real or not. It’s still so shocking to watch.
BarBeeGirl 1 hour ago
In case you don’t know — will smith slapped Chris rock on stage at the Oscar’s bc Chris made a joke about Will’s wife and her short hair. Will smith was banned from attending the Oscar’s for 10 years
#21
Katy Perry's lead up and promo for Witness
Just the entire thing, the music videos, the 24 hour live stream, the performance at SNL, dressing up as Hilary Clinton for Halloween, hosting the VMAs
All of those had multiple people working on it and going yasss this is a great idea.
#22
New Balance announcing support of the Trump administration for its pro domestic manufacturing policies.
The left started to boycott them and burn their shoes.
Meanwhile, the far right attempted to coopt them as the "official shoes of the alt right.".
#23
Lee Ryan from the British boy band Blue ruining their US debut by saying that 9/11 terrorist attacks were "blown out of proportion" and asking people to be more concerned about the animals.
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