Top 20 Worst Marketing Fails

people say to me how can you sell this for such a low price i say because it's total crap hey everyone i'm rebecca and welcome to watch mojo today we're counting down our picks for the top 20 marketing fails sweeter bolder better you're insane delicious tasting aids candy contains vitamins and minerals no drugs if i give this to you are you up for whatever happens for this list we're looking at advertising campaigns or statements from major corporations that backfired horribly resulting in tons of negative press can you think of any other marketing blunders be sure to use the comments below to tell us about your favorites alright let's get into it number 20 live for now pepsi titled live for now this short film slash commercial sees kendall jenner parting a protest like some kind of miraculous savior [Music] by giving a can of pepsi to a police officer she unites them all using the power of soft drinks the ad generated immediate criticism and was pulled just one day after its debut many critics argued that it insensitively borrowed elements from the black lives matter movement trivializing the protests and very real issues in the process others claimed that pepsi was utilizing social justice causes for their own commercial benefit even bernice king got in on the bashing saying quote if only daddy would have known about the power of hashtag pepsi number 19. an illegal weapon as a giveaway electronic arts producers of violent video games are always having to defend themselves from parent groups that claim that such entertainment makes impressionable young minds similarly violent when ea sent out a pair of commemorative but functional brass knuckles along with early press copies of godfather 2 they really gave the naysayers an easy argument worse than being bad for pr this stunt was actually illegal given that brass knuckles are banned outright in many states you can appreciate that ea was getting into the spirit of their property but the distribution of contraband weaponry via mail isn't something a company wants on their rap sheet they quickly asked that the knuckles all be returned number 18 all i want for xmas is a psp.com sony it can often be embarrassing when corporations try to relate to young people in december of 2006 the website all i want for christmas is a psp.com appeared it was said to be a fan blog following the adventures of charlie who was attempting to get his friend jeremy a psp for christmas the blog featured your stereotypical hipster tweens complete with deliberate misspellings like beats with a z you know to relate to all the cool kids visitors to the site immediately smelled something fishy and left some nasty comments resulting in charlie asking quote yo where all you haters come from the site's url was quickly tracked to an ad agency and sony was forced to admit their ploy asking quote maybe our speech was a little too funky fresh how do you do fellow kids what number 17 the endless crab fiasco red lobster don't offer up an all-you-can-eat special on a popular and typically pricey item unless you've triple checked your calculations restaurants typically advertise doorbuster specials knowing that whatever the giveaway is they'll turn a profit on the complimentary products they move in the case of this 2003 red lobster promotion however someone grossly underestimated american appetites for crustaceans crab lovers took their seats and proceeded to order plate after plate of the stuff by the third serving the restaurant was in the red by the fourth significantly so then man ate all our shrimp and two plastic lobsters tis no man tis a remorseless eaten machine by the end of a promotion lasting several months red lobster had lost roughly 3.3 million dollars hanking the parent company's stock value president ed nomura stepped down number 16 new look holiday inn in 1997 holiday inn was spending a collective one billion dollars to upgrade its numerous facilities the best way to get that information across to the public according to someone in marketing by comparing it to a post-op trans woman this super bowl commercial depicts men ogling an attractive woman at a class reunion new nose six thousand dollars lips three thousand dollars new chest eight thousand dollars the narrator lists off the prices for the woman's surgical work before man realizes that he's talking to an old male classmate the narrator concludes imagine what holiday inns will look like when we spend a billion the ad received backlash and the company was forced to pull it from the air saying quote we understand that the ad has offended some people that was never our intention number 15 hashtag my nypd photo campaign nypd the relationship between police and the public in the united states remains fraught with instances of police brutality coming under increasing scrutiny in 2014 the nypd decided to address the bad pr by asking people to tweet images of their interactions with police using the hashtag mynypd unsurprisingly this was an absolute disaster of epic proportions within hours users flooded twitter with photos of police brutality including many taken during the occupy wall street protests frankly you have to wonder how they didn't see this coming the hashtag went viral in all the worst ways possible number fourteen the world's largest popsicle melts snapple clean up on aisle three and by that we mean manhattan's union square in 2005 snapple decided to go big in the promotional stunt department for their new icy treats 25 feet tall and 171.5 tons big to be precise aiming to set a world record they constructed a monolithic popsicle and then attempted to unveil it before the public in downtown new york but first it had to be transported from edison new jersey on a hot summer's day and sure enough as anyone who's ever eaten a popsicle could have predicted it melted the grand unveiling was more a torrent of sticky juice one that firefighters had to be called in to wash away number 13 making the ceo's social security number public lifelock it's one thing to put your money where your mouth is but your identity and personal security that's too much to gamble in any situation that's my real social security number nevertheless in a well-intentioned but wildly inadvisable pr stunt todd davis the ceo of lifelock which offers protection against identity theft put his social security number on the company website claiming that thanks to his company's products it didn't matter in the only possible outcome davis was promptly defrauded by criminals who were only too willing to prove the man wrong not once but a reported 13 times this spectacular failure naturally undermined people's faith in the company which was fined millions for deceptive advertising i didn't steal his identity i literally got it off the back of a truck number 12 susan album party susan boyle remember when susan boyle took the world by storm with her rendition of i dreamed a dream i dreamed well that eventually led to a contract and multiple studio albums including 2012's standing ovation the greatest songs from the stage in a joke straight out of arrested development boyle's pr team decided to plug the album with the hashtag susan album party it was an unfortunate choice of phrasing as many people on social media hilariously read it as sue's anal bum party [Music] the trended on twitter with many people playing along and providing jokes on their own let that be a lesson to pr teams everywhere number 11 the windows 98 demo microsoft corporation before you show off a fancy new toy you should make sure that it actually you know works unfortunately bill gates and microsoft product manager chris capisello were left scrambling on stage when the operating system decided to tap out during a presentation you'll notice that this scanner build whoa [Applause] while demonstrating windows 98 at comdex capicella plugged a scanner into the pc resulting in the widely feared blue screen of death the audience laughed clapped and cheered in good humor while capicella and gates awkwardly smiled along not really knowing what to do or how to react moving right along they played it off well with gates even providing a cheeky little joke that must be why we're not shipping windows 98 absolutely absolutely number 10 the touch woody pc and its equally laughable advertising panasonic back in the 1990s when personal computing was still fighting its footing panasonic managed to come up with possibly the worst name and marketing possible in an attempt to emphasize the user-friendly nature of this new japanese computer they licensed the woody woodpecker character to be used as not only the mascot but the computer's namesake as well meet the woody oh but wait it gets worse because it boasted a touch screen the japanese company put out early promotional materials with the tagline touch woody the internet pecker seriously we couldn't make this stuff up once they realized their mistake they made some last minute changes but woody touchscreen isn't much better number nine free flights hoover though it's hard to fathom in hindsight back in the early 90s someone at hoover thought it would be a good deal to offer free flights to british customers who bought 100 british pounds somewhere around 175 us dollars in 1992 worth of their products two return flight seats unbelievable at first the flights were limited to within europe but in a move that resulted in things really getting out of hand the company eventually added us destinations the money people had to spend was a fraction of a normal ticket price and so people bought vacuums just for the trip i was shocked that they would run a promotional activity where they were only asking a consumer to spend 100 pounds to gain a reward of up to 600 pounds utterly overwhelmed by the results hoover backed out of its promise fired executives and lost tens of millions of dollars number eight aids the carly company for decades this product enjoyed healthy sales its popularity peaking in the 70s to early 80s delicious tasting aids candy contains vitamins and minerals no drugs coming in a wide variety of sweet flavors aids was widely touted and marketed as an appetite suppressant the manufacturer could not have predicted the aids epidemic of the 1980s but the connections were immediately made i've tried fad diets powders pills still my weight's been up and down like a yo-yo until the aids plan taught me how to take off weight and help keep it off it also didn't help the product's case that significant weight loss is a symptom of the disease and it's really unfortunate that the company had actors and models claiming quote the aids diet plan really works and i'm not gaining weight i'm losing weight deliciously with the aid of aids the aids diet plan really worked by the late 80s sales of aids had dropped 50 percent and the candy was eventually taken off the market number 7 kkk wednesday krispy kreme donuts incorporated sometimes an idea is just so baffling and obviously problematic that it's a wonder no one caught it earlier this is one of those cases back at it again at krispy kreme to cash in on children being out of school a krispy kreme franchise in hull england created a promotion titled kkk wednesday it was meant to stand for krispy kreme club wednesday but people obviously connected it to the ku klux klan krispy kreme was quick to apologize delete the promotion off facebook and launch an internal investigation into the major slip up somebody definitely got fired over this one number six hashtag up for whatever budweiser i give this to you are you up for whatever happens as part of their hashtag up for whatever campaign in 2015 bud light featured various slogans on their bottles one unfortunately read quote the perfect beer for removing no from your vocabulary for the night hashtag up for whatever the label went through at least five layers of approval before it landed on the bottle according to vice president of bud light alexander lombrecht it was meant to suggest a sense of adventure however many people thought it sounded like bud light was undermining the concept of consent and promoting sexual assault in response lambrecht admitted that the message had missed the mark and vowed to cease production of that particular label number five total crap ratner's group in 1991 gerald ratner was serving as chairman and ceo of ratner's group a jewelry retailer the company was incredibly popular in the late 80s and early 90s that is until 1991 when ratner made a speech addressing the institute of directors he called the company's cheap sherry decanter quote total crap and criticized their gold earrings people say to me how can you sell this for such a low price i say because it's total crap while those in attendance laughed at ratner's jokes the company's value instantly deflated ratner's comments got him fired nearly bankrupted the company and forced them to change their name to cygnet group some people say well that's cheaper than a prawn sandwich from marks and spencers but i have to say the sandwich will probably last longer than the earrings today the phrase doing a ratner is still used whenever a corporate gaffe tarnishes a brand's reputation number four anonymous love letters fiat when you're looking to buy a new car you're expecting a simple and professional exchange in the early 90s however fiat broke with that time-honored dynamic and decided to mail anonymous love letters to the demographic of women in spain they were targeting with their new cinquecento hatchbacks these letters were personally addressed bore no fiat branding and adopted the voice and perspective of the car characterized as an admirer the car wrote stuff like quote we met again on the street yesterday and i noticed how you glanced interestedly in my direction except again there was no context just a letter so naturally some fifty thousand recipients thought they had a stalker number three number fever pepsi as an attempt to increase sales in the philippines pepsi held what seemed like a pretty standard numbered bottle cap giveaway but with a big prize of 1 million pesos or 40 000 us dollars the promotion worked wonders and pepsi experienced an astronomical rise in sales doctor heard about the number fever certain popular numbers such as 349 were supposed to be eliminated from the grand prize draw but somewhere the wires got crossed and 349 was wrongly picked and announced as the winning number the result hundreds of thousands of winners expecting a forty thousand dollar payout pepsi backed out of the promise and riots ensued pepsi faced lawsuits trucks were burned and people were actually killed number two edsel the ford motor company ford has made some great vehicles throughout the years the edsel was not one of them a ton of advertising went into the ford edsel as it was the first new ford brand since the mercury this torque is usable power another top-selling feature of the edsel founded in 1956 edsel looked to compete in the mid-budget market alongside the chrysler dodge and the gm pontiac as it had been 20 years since the mercury expectations were high and ford pumped upwards of 250 million dollars into production market research and advertising in 2020 that would equate to roughly 2.3 billion dollars some will find a home near others far but in each there is inbuilt freedom of movement however edsel was a massive failure owing to a wide range of circumstances including a recession and the cars being overhyped and poorly made it was discontinued just three years after its debut want more mojo context tv produces original high quality videos on business entrepreneurship and politics but from a different point of view the battle is being fought between netflix and youtube the federal reserve should remove all of the current board members who serve during the fake account scam if you want exclusive interviews with industry leaders in-depth media analysis and documentaries with a fresh take on the state of business check out context tv [Music] number one new coke the coca-cola company coca-cola is the most popular soft drink in the world and it's been around since 1886 and they're clearly doing something right yet in the mid 80s they decided to go against the old adage if it ain't broke don't fix it and released new coke to a largely unresponsive public introducing the new taste of coca-cola the best coca-cola ever that's all i'm going to say in fact that's all i have to say at the time popularity of coke was waning owing to increased competition they changed the formula to boost sales but the result was the exact opposite sweeter bolder better you're insane everyone hated it sales slumped and pepsi gloated even taking out a full-page ad in the new york times to declare themselves the winner of the cola wars new coke lasted just 79 days before the company announced it would be returning to the classic formula after all what could 12 little ounces of pepsi do yeah you're probably right what could happen pepsi the choice of a new generation so the ones with the problematic names always make me laugh like the aids diet pill one it's just really unfortunate because aids the disease didn't even exist yet but anyway however the bad planning and bad marketing award i think goes to red lobster because they really should have known that all you can eat anything is really going to result in a problematic situation anyway be sure to let us know in the comments which are your favorite marketing fails or come talk to me on twitter or instagram rebecca brayton or on my youtube channel see ya [Music] you

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Keywords: marketing fails, advertising fails, business fails, product fails, worst marketing campaigns, worst advertising campaigns, worst marketing strategies, controversial marketing, controversial advertising, coca-cola marketing fails, pepsi marketing fail, krispy kreme fails, fiat marketing fail, ford marketing fail, marketing disasters, marketing blunders, marketing flops, business flops, failed ideas, Business, Entrepreneur, History, watchmojo, watch mojo, top 10, list, mojo

Id: QO0ue4uVfTk

Length: 19min 5sec (1145 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 21 2020