Marketing Failures: Lessons in what NOT to Do

Dove

The brand was labelled racist over an advert in 2017 as an image of a black woman removing her top to reveal a white woman in the next photo insinuating after using the Dove lotion. The video was quickly removed. 

Dove responded by issuing a statement saying "An image we recently posted on Facebook missed the mark in representing women of colour thoughtfully. We deeply regret the offence it caused." However many people didn’t think that their apology was good enough.

Many people were astounded by the lack of thought that went into the advert, with social media blowing up the comment section demanding a boycott of Doves products.

With advertising being such an important factor, the Dove brand has certainly caused damage to its reputation after this being the second incident the brand has been accused of being racist. 

Matt Rizzetta, the CEO of the brand-communications agency North 6th Agency said, "It's not the first time that it's happened to them, and that's why lands them a place alongside the biggest brand crises of the year” whilst also stating "I don't question their intent, but I do question their approval process, their execution, and general common sense,". 

You can view a breakdown of the ad here 

Pepsi ad 

The Pepsi ad caused a lot of controversy and many stated it was a very tone-deaf campaign, a lot of viewers said it was reminiscent of the black lives matter movement, as many felt it was trying to capitalise on a serious topic of conversation.  

The ad was a staged protest that included Kendall Jenner who approaches a cop who's guarding the protest and hands him a can of Pepsi. Many viewers felt it made a strong political stance more light-hearted and seemed like Pepsi were being insensitive to political resistance. 

Elle Hearns, the executive director of the Marsha P. Johnson Institute and formerly an organizer for Black Lives Matter, said “No one is finding joy from Pepsi at a protest,” she said. “That’s just not the reality of our lives. That’s not what it looks like to take bold action.”

The campaign was highly talked about as April 4th 2017 saw more than 427,000 mentions of Pepsi on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram alone, with April 5th 2017 accumulating another 1.25 million mentions at the time the ad was released. 

However, many of these mentions were negative causing great backlash for the brand.

You can watch the video and reactions here 

Volkswagen 

Another marketing fail comes from Volkswagen in 2020, the short advert shows their new Golf 8 parked in an open shot of a street, whilst a large white hand gestures a black pedestrian away from the car before flicking them into a cafe called the petite colon, thus translating to a little colonist in French. 

The advert caused outrage and upset as many deemed it racist. The ad was posted on their Instagram for 24 hours before being deleted.

Board members of Volkswagen apologised and stated “We understand the public outrage at this. Because we’re horrified, too. This video is an insult to all achievements of the civil rights movement. It is an insult to every decent person,” they wrote.

However, they blamed the lack of sensitivity and procedural errors, for its failure to prevent the video creation and publication, which no one was fired for, but Volkswagen states that they would create a board of diversity to watch videos frame by frame to ensure no further issues like this emerges. 

With Volkswagen also being in the press for their emissions scandal, they have made efforts to try to redeem themselves, however, have failed to stay clear of any bad publicity. 

Co-op 

The Co-op came under fire in 2017 as an easter advert they printed in the newspaper was viewed as “outrageously sexist.” 

The tagline for the advert was "Be a good egg. Treat your daughter to doing the washing up." The advert highlights classic sexism which many were not happy about, the advert also promotes the easter egg to be fair trade, one of the main principles of fair trade being gender equality.

The advert seemed to completely contradict what the co-op stands for, however, an apology was released by the supermarket and the advert's tagline was changed for future adverts. 

HP

HP creatively failed in their ad promoting their HP laptops. As many people know windows and MacOS have been the leading PC operating systems, in an attempt to show the “perfect laptop” HPs advert ironically features a laptop running on macOS with the Apple logo on show in the corner, does HP think macOS is the better software?

There was a failure in Photoshop within this advert as Apple's license agreement ensures macOS can’t run on PC. This advert's small mistake however won't cause reputable damage and can be laughed at for how silly the misunderstanding is.

These 5 marketing fails are prime examples of how a bad campaign can affect your brand's image and sales. Bud Light is currently experiencing its sales plummet due to the ongoing backlash of hiring a transgender influencer, Dylan Mulvaney, as a spokesperson. 

As a complete digital marketing agency, The Zen Agency can guide you through the process of creating a successful campaign. Our team of specialists would carry out market research to identify trends and gaps in the market to target before creating a digital marketing strategy that would include the use of videography, paid advertising and social media marketing to successfully promote your brand and avoid any marketing fails like the campaigns above. 

If you’re looking to create a successful marketing campaign, get in touch with our team of friendly experts here to avoid featuring in a post like this.