Yesterday, we showed you one of the worst ads we’ve ever seen. Now we’re bringing you the some of the worst marketing mistakes. Seems like a good way to finish out the week if you ask us.
That ad was a total snoozefest and downright offensive to creatives everywhere. But it still got the most clicks of the day. By a lot.
Learning from others’ mistakes is clearly a way we all love to learn. So here we are, with some of the biggest marketing blunders over the years, from emails to social media to guerilla marketing.
Here are a few faux pas from today’s Read:
- Tone deaf social media posts. In a tweet promoting clothes, Kenneth Cole made a joke while referencing the turmoil in Egypt at the time. The tweet was taken down after immediate backlash. The lesson? Humor doesn’t work if you’re newsjacking something contentious.
- Bad logo redesigns. We’ve all seen plenty of terrible logo redesigns. But Gap’s in particular stands out because they just didn’t know their audience. When they changed their logo to appeal to a more hip crowd, they lost a lot of customer loyal. It went over so poorly with their following, they changed it back after two days.
- Guerilla marketing gone awry. “Awry,” she says. Cartoon Network basically shut down the city of Boston. The network set up LED signs in various places to promote one of their shows, but a Boston resident thought they were bombs. Badda-bing-badda-boom, bomb scare. The problem cost the head of Cartoon Network his job, and the broadcasting company $2 million in compensation for the emergency response team.
Still more flubs from Netflix, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, The New York Times, and a coffee company that promised free stuff, but ran out of it. Tsk tsk.
