10 Unbelievable Advertising Fiascoes

For various reasons, product advertisements sometimes go awry in a big way. A case in point: Budweiser Light’s ad campaign featuring transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney resulted in a boycott that cost the company almost 1.5 billion dollars, as customers switched from Bud Light to competitors’ brands. As Harvard Business Review points out, companies learned that there was a cost associated with taking stances on controversial social issues.

The unbelievable advertising fiascoes on this list show ten ways advertisers have paid the price for offending consumers or creating problems that wouldn’t have existed otherwise.

Related: 10 Controversial Advertising Campaigns That Backfired

10 Aqua Teen Hunger Force Promotion

Foot-tall electronic signs resembling circuit boards with protruding wires and batteries were found on bridges and other high-profile spots across Boston, Massachusetts, on January 31, 2007. Although the signs showed a boxy cartoon character flipping off passersby, some regarded the signs as suspicious, thinking that they might be terrorists’ bombs. The Boston police department’s investigation of the incident cost $750,000.

It turned out that the signs were intended to promote Turner Broadcasting’s Cartoon Network TV show Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Needless to say, Mayor Thomas Menino was not amused, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Boston authorities said Turner would be held accountable for the money that the marketing had cost the city. The same advertising campaign, it was discovered, had also been unleashed upon New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.

NBC News said that Turner Broadcasting and Interference, the marketing company that organized the event, apologized for the ill-considered publicity stunt and agreed to pay several state and local agencies a $2 million settlement.^[1]

9 Hoover’s Free Return-Trip Flights Campaign

Pay £100 for the Hoover product of your choice, and you could win two airline return-trip tickets. The promotion, the company hoped, would prompt people to buy the washing machines and vacuum cleaners collecting dust in Hoover’s warehouse. The ad campaign created an overwhelming response, BBC News noted, which prompted Hoover to launch a second promotion.

Limited seating aboard airplanes made it impossible for Hoover to honor all who bought one of its products, and the company was sued over six years by hundreds of customers-turned-litigants.

Rod Taylor explains the outcome of the fiasco: “While some 220,000 did end up flying free via the Hoover-Maytag campaign, fallout went on for years, costing an estimated £50 million (US $99 million). Not only did [all] involved lose their jobs, but Maytag [also] ultimately cut its losses in the UK and sold out to Italian appliance firm Candy.”^[2]

8 Choking Mystique Billboard Ad

A billboard advertising the 2016 superhero movie X-Men: Apocalypse made Rose McGowan see red. The villain (Oscar Isaac) grips Mystique’s throat, choking her, as she seeks, in vain, to pull away. The tagline reads, “Only the strong will survive,” implying that Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) would be strangled to death.

McGowan said, during an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, “There is a major problem when the men and women at 20th Century Fox think casual violence against women is the way to market a film.” Mentioning that a nine-year-old girl had questioned the depiction of violence against a woman, McGowan asked, “If she can see it, why can’t Fox?”

McGowan’s message got through to Fox; the company apologized for the offensive billboard, admitting that “we didn’t immediately realize the upsetting connotation of this image in print form” and said that promotional materials with the image would be removed. Fox’s statement assured the public that it would never condone violence against women.^[3]

7 Calvin Klein Ad

The advertising watchdog group, officially known as Australia’s Advertising Standards Bureau, ordered the removal of billboard advertisements after finding that a Calvin Klein jeans campaign suggested rape and violence. The offensive ads appeared in Sydney and Melbourne. Two of the billboards were soon removed, and a third, displaying “a woman with barely concealed breasts,” was scheduled for removal.

Another reason for the ordered removal of the ads was that they depicted the nearly naked female model as the “plaything” of the male models, one of whom, naked but for his jeans, which had been lowered to his groin, straddled her. Two other male models were present, one shirtless, the other wearing an unbuttoned shirt.

According to reporter Elissa Doherty, “sexual assault workers and women’s advocates” agreed that the ad conveyed “connotations of gang rape.” Clinical psychologist Alison Grundy characterized advertisers in general as “reaching a dangerous new low by using sexual violence as a marketing tool.”^[4]

6 Magi-Can Marketing

The idea may have seemed brilliant to the executives who put it into effect, but Coca-Cola’s $100-million-dollar 1990 Magi-Can campaign was a fiasco. There were problems from the start. As Bernice Kanner reported for New York Magazine, “Coke put cash or prize vouchers in cans; sometimes the cans would jam, and one child even sipped the foul-smelling chlorinated water that replaced the soda.”

As a video announcing the campaign suggests, the approach might have seemed fun. If consumers were among the lucky ones when they pulled their cans’ tabs, a light-activated voice would proclaim them winners. They could then telephone the 800 number on the can to claim their prize—a CD, CD player, or stereo. Due to negative feedback about the Magi-Cans, Coke ended the campaign three weeks after it started.^[5]

5 Bottle Cap Prize Promotion

Not to be outdone by Coca-Cola, Pepsi launched an ad campaign in 1992 that aimed to make millionaires out of poor Filipinos. The “Numbers Fever” promotion, which awarded cash prizes as high as a million pesos, or $37,000 (over $83,000 in today’s dollars), to customers who’d bought a bottle of Pepsi with a cap bearing the day’s three-digit winning number, was an immediate hit.

On May 25, 1992, though, Pepsi refused to pay up. Claimants’ bottle caps bore the correct winning number, 349, but the caps didn’t have the correct security number. Outraged, winners pointed out that promotional materials had not mentioned the need for a “winning” security number.

Pepsi held firm but, as an act of goodwill, gave $18 to those whose bottle caps bore the number 349, a gesture that cost the company $10 million.^[6]

4 Buzz Lightyear Sales Campaign

The Toy Story animated movie (1995) made its Buzz Lightyear hero a hot property––so hot that a Marketing Week article relates that the Disney company decided to limit the supply of its Buzz Lightyear action figures to create hysteria before “swamping the market,” expecting, by this tactic, to make a fortune in 1996 Christmas sales.

Hasbro and other major manufacturers weren’t as confident and declined the opportunity to seal the deal with Disney, so the contract went to a smaller Canadian company, Thinkaway Toys. The company could not supply enough action figures to meet the market’s demand and lacked the clout, perhaps, “to twist suppliers’ arms and speed up the manufacturing process.” Sales were probably four times fewer than the number that could have been sold, John Johnson, executive assistant to the toy manufacturer’s CEO Albert Chan, admitted. The toy fiasco cost Disney a whopping $50 million.^[7]

3 Lingerie Poster

Did a lingerie ad violate Australia’s advertising standards? Some mall shoppers thought so when they saw a poster of a scantily dressed woman in the storefront window of a Honey Birdette store. They complained to their nation’s Ad Standards, the website of which refers to itself as the part of the Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) that fields complaints and decides whether ads violate the advertising industry codes.

During the course of one year, 16 of 31 Honey Birdette ads had breached the AANA’s code of ethics. In fact, Honey Birdette was the most complained-about business, possibly for good reason, at least in the context of advertising. As Gayle Kerr, a professor of advertising, explains, complaints can be a form of promotion despite their negativity.

A spokesperson for the lingerie company offered a different explanation for its rather provocative ads: “empowering women.” She stated further, “Women wear lingerie every day. There’s no reason for this to be hidden away in such secrecy or banished to the back of the stores.”^[8]

2 Boohoo Ad

Boohoo, a fashion company, also offended the sensitivities of some Australians, who objected to an advertisement featuring a model in a T-shirt, a thong-style bikini bottom, and trainers footwear. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned the ad on the grounds that it objectified and sexualized women and “that neither the partial nudity nor the bikini bottoms were relevant to the product.” The ASA also took Boohoo to task, declaring that, in the future, its ads should be prepared with a “sense of responsibility to consumers and to society” and refrain from objectifying women.

Like Honey Birdette, Boohoo was a repeat offender, having previously emailed customers an ad suggesting that they “send nudes and set the tone with new season hues.” The ad was intended to market a range of clothes in skin tone colors. The ASA regarded the campaign as being socially irresponsible, fearing that young customers could be harmfully affected by pressure to share sexual images of themselves. Boohoo had a different take on the effect of their fashion, which, a company spokesman said, focuses on “inclusive, body positive imagery.”^[9]

1 PETA’s Wool-Is-Cruel Ad

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is well known for its use of nudity to arouse public indignation about actions that its members perceive as constituting cruelty to animals. In its ad campaign against wool, however, the organization used a different tactic, claiming that woolgathering, so to speak, was a cruel practice and urging people not to support it.

In February 2019, PETA’s ads ran on the sides of buses, apparently targeting passengers, passersby, bystanders, and others. The ads proclaimed, “Don’t let them pull the wool over your eyes. Wool is just as cruel as fur. Go wool-free this winter.”

When people complained to the ASA, PETA responded with a number of false comparisons of the treatment of animals in the fur trade to that of animals in the wool industry. The ASA was unconvinced, stating that the treatment of furry and fleecy animals differed and pointing out that laws govern how sheep are sheared to protect them against cruelty. In addition, the ASA objected that, unlike animals in the fur industry, which are killed for their fur, sheep are not killed for their wool. Therefore, PETA’s claims were found to be misleading, and the organization’s erroneous ads were banned.^[10]