(1) Mocking the BP oil spill
Spirit Airlines learned the hard way that making light of the Gulf Coast spill was the wrong thing to do.
Its promo invited customers to “Check out the oil on [its] beaches,” and then followed it up with shots of women on the beach, suntanning in their bikini’s while being slathered in oil.
Lest anybody miss the message, the advert also featured bottles of sunscreen printed in yellow and green, with the name “Best Protection,” aka BP.
As if Spirit Air’s carry-on bag charges weren’t ridic enough, now they’re mocking the oil spill Not funny. http://twitpic.com/1z1rsg
” Audrey Binkowski (@laughmom) June 22, 2010
Of course, the company pulled the plug on the campaign within 24 hours and issued what many called at the time a semi-apologetic press release.
Understanding reputation (and not ending up like BP)
The company stated: “It is unfortunate that some have misunderstood our intention with today’s beach promotion. We are merely addressing the false perception that we have oil on our beaches, and we are encouraging customers to support Florida and our other beach destinations by continuing to travel to these vacation hot spots.”
After all of that it then went on to say: “The only oil you’ll find when traveling to our beaches is sun tan oil.”
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(2) Making use of the Holocaust
In 2012, the founder of Dubai-based Circuit Factory, Phil Parkinson, was forced to apologise for a series of promotional images that alluded to the Holocaust. For example, the firm pasted on its Facebook page the image of a notorious Nazi concentration camp with the slogan: Kiss your calories goodbye.
To make matters worse,Parkinson had posted the images under the title New Poster Campaign aka Politically Correct .
Within hours Parkinson had removed four of the ten images due to understandably a storm of protest erupting on Facebook and Twitter, where criticism of the images ranged from tasteless to despicable . One image was a black-and-white version of the rail tracks leading to Auschwitz IIBirkenau.
The following day another three images had been removed. One was a poster depicting a toilet full of faeces, accompanied by the word bootcamps . The second showed men doing press-ups, with the caption: Saving Dubai from s**t like this .
The circuit factory epic fail ad. Apparently you lost your brain while trying to lose weight. #GoDie pic.twitter.com/bxzDFG4C
” Alison Lehr (@AlisonLehr) January 3, 2012
Read on to find out which two companies had launched campaigns, planned in advance, only to have them go out the same time as an unfortunate event.
(3) Unfortunately foretelling an event ahead of its time
Contrary to the other companies, Nikes marketing campaign came at the wrong time not knowing that its advert would coincide with what was to happen.
South African runner Oscar Pistorius garnered fame at the 2012 Olympics, where he became the first double amputee in history to compete. With a ton of gold medals having been won in the Paralympics as well, Nike decided Pistorius would become a spokesman for the brand.
Even after he was alleged to continuously drink energy drinks and caffeine pills, as well as being charged for shooting a gun out of his car that same year and firing a handgun at a restaurant, Nike decided to stick with Pistorius.
Unfortunately, it’s marketing team came up with an advert that the team would struggle to pull quickly enough.
This ad Oscar Pistorius did with Nike is now quite eery. pic.twitter.com/IoTHDXwe
” Eric Alper (@ThatEricAlper) February 14, 2013
The very next day of the campaign going live, it came to light that Pistorius had killed his girlfriend.
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(4) Weight Watchers tried to pull its campaign last-minute as well
Much like Nike, Weight Watchers found itself posting an advert that had been in the works for a long time at a very wrong time.
The company had been collecting celebrity spokespeople and was set to feature their images alongside tag lines. The first featured Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, alongside the bold statement that losing weight was “harder than outrunning the paparazzi.”
This was in the year 1997, and while it was a great year in terms of cloned sheep and Mars robots, it was also when being chased by the paparazzi through the streets of Paris in part led to Princess Dianas car crash.
The Weight Watchers advert came out the very next day. While the company had tried to cancel its campaign, thousands of direct mail brochures had already been sent out , and print adverts had gone to press in magazines such asGlamourAndSelf.
Publicist Howard Rubenstein, whose agency set up the promotional campaign, said:?”It has a touch of irony that nobody could have predicted.The duchess certainly is sensitive to the situation, and it’s just unfortunate that the mailing went out when it did. We were able to catch 95 per cent of what was being done.”
