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The recent United and Pepsi social media firestorms are still captivating the media's undivided attention. It’s no surprise that the online perpetuation of these real-life events is the prime topic of conversation for marketers across all industries (not just airlines and soft drinks). Both brand blunders have sparked a burning question that’s occupying my mindspace, and it doesn’t have to do with brand reputation. “Does anyone even care?” Brands have one purpose, selling products and services to the consumers of the world. So unless social backlash and media scrutiny are causing a serious decline in sales numbers, are there any actual consequences?...
But to little old me, a sincere apology goes a long way. When I sense genuine remorse, it means a lot to me -- perhaps because it's so rare, at least in my experience. Combined with my nerdy affection for all things marketing, that sentiment applies to brand apologies, too. It's not so much that I think, "Wow, that means a lot to me," but more like, "Wow, that company really nailed saying, 'Sorry.'" So, who's done it best? We rounded up some of our favorite brand apologies to inspire you next time you make a mistake -- and need to admit your wrongdoing....
It’s a tricky time to be a food marketer. Consumers are scrutinizing more than ever to what goes into the foods they buy. And what constitutes “healthy” to consumers is in flux. The FDA recently announced that it will be calling out “added sugar” on nutrition labels in the future. It is estimated that 68% of processed foods contain added sugars. “It’s going to really surprise people who go to organic and whole foods stores, when they find that all this natural food they’ve been buying is full of added sugar,” said Barry Popkin, UNC professor and author of a study called, “Sweetening of the Global Diet. ”I heard that there are 61 different names for added sugar listed on food labels, which can make it hard for consumers to evaluate the amount of sugar in products they buy. The sneakiest trick to to have multiple sources of added sugar in one product, so that no one type of sugar shows up first on the ingredients panel....
2016 saw its fair share of corporate public-relations mishaps, but some were more cringeworthy than others. To be sure, the PR crises in certain cases weren't all that bad compared with the serious business missteps that precipitated a few of them, but the fact remains that there is always a better and a worse way to talk to customers and the public when something's gone wrong. These were three of the year's most egregious gaffes, and what companies can learn from them heading into 2017
A bizarre Christmas commercial from Russia is under fire for showing Santa Claus trying to teach a single mother a lesson in being a better parent—by abducting her and dragging her through the wilderness by a rope and eventually pulling a knife on her. And the ad's creators seem baffled that anyone could have a problem with it. The spot, for Credit Bank of Moscow, was created by ad agency 3Sba. It is beautifully shot, which makes it even weirder—clearly no expense was spared in producing the film, yet how no one raised a red flag during its creation is baffling. Check out the ad here...
Everyone from pollsters to pundits got the result of the US presidential election wrong.
But few can have made it in such an expensive manner.
Newsweek and a partner that prints up special commemorative issues has been forced into an embarrassing recall, after it sent out 125,000 copies of its Madam President issue designed to celebrate Hillary Clinton's win....
New Balance is under (or on) fire — literally.
Following the election last week, the athletic footwear and apparel brand became one of the first international companies to congratulate President-elect Donald Trump, it appears mainly because of what his proposed policies could mean for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, Matt LeBretton, the vice president of public affairs at New Balance tweeted, “The Obama admin turned a deaf ear to us & frankly w/ Pres-Elect Trump we feel things are going to move in the right direction.”
Days later, the white supremacist site The Daily Stormer, published an article calling New Balance the “official shoes of white people” and the “official brand of the Trump Revolution.”
In response, some people on social media are showing their disdain for the brand’s endorsement by defacing their New Balance sneakers on social media, or tossing them in the trash.
Weight Watchers sent lightbulbs like this to female journalists.
The intention was innocent enough – promote a positive body image among women. But the delivery was not so subtle.
Weight Watchers dipped their toes in the "PG sex toy" industry this week, sending out low wattage light bulbs to users – designed to give users a "boost in the bedroom".
But public relations expert, Mike Hutcheson slammed the stunt as fattist, ill-judged and probably "written by a snot-ass skinny person"....
Gold's Gym is acting quickly today to defuse a PR crisis sparked by an Egyptian franchisee who created a social media post that showed a pear and said "This Is No Shape for a Girl." (UPDATE: The gym chain has posted a lengthy explanation and apology on Facebook, where the company says it has terminated its franchisee agreement with the location behind the ad. See below for the company's full statement.) While the Egyptian location has apologized for the image, it remains in circulation on social media, with many thinking it's an official marketing image for the gym chain. This morning, Gold's Gym's official Twitter account has been responding to many of the ad's critics....
The nonprofit Online Trust Alliance (OTA) on Wednesday conducted a study that found 71% of native ads on top media sites fail to offer adequate labeling, transparency, and complete consumer disclosure.
This is a blow to the native ad/branded content business and should be a wake-up call for publishers and content studios.
The study, an analysis of native ads on the top 100 news websites, found that 71% earned failing scores for disclosures, delineation, and discoverability. The bottom line: The sites didn’t offer consumers the ability to easily discern pure editorial from ads.
As most readers of this column know, native advertising refers to Web site content that’s funded and produced outside the publisher’s editorial review or influence, yet is designed to appear similar to editorial on that site. As the OTA mentions, “this illustrates the tension -- paid for and controlled separately, but presented in a way to appear as editorial. The potential for audience confusion or misinterpretation is obvious, and the rapid rise in the deployment of native has already prompted concerns from advocates, media and regulators.”...
“While the industry looks at native advertising as the holy grail to drive new revenues, they are failing to address the long-term issue. With 71% of native ads failing to pass the consumer transparency acid test, this report should be a wake-up call to the industry. Inaction is not an option. Conversely, providing these concrete examples and recommendations helps advertisers, networks and publishers in moving forward,” Craig Spiezle, executive director at the Online Trust Alliance, told Native Insider via email.
Kmart was once one of America's leading discount retailers. But its sales have been tanking for years, and now it's closing dozens of stores. At its peak in 2000, Kmart raked in $37 billion in sales and had 2,156 stores. Since then, Kmart's sales have dropped 72% to $10 billion. It now has just 941 stores, with plans to close nearly 70 more by next month. We went to a Kmart store in Richmond, Virginia, to find out why it's losing customers....
Ryanair, the Irish low-cost airline, is 24-hour £9.99 flash sale for people who "need a getaway" after the UK voted to leave the European Union. An ad for the promotion on Twitter takes on the famous "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" monkeys and replaces them with UKIP leader Nigel Farage, former London Mayor Boris Johnson, and justice secretary Michael Gove - the leading three figures of the Leave campaign. Ryanair, was firmly in the Remain camp - so much so that it had sent out a marketing email earlier on Friday morning - hours ahead of the official referendum results - to promote the sale, reading: "Celebrate remaining in Europe with 1 million seats from £9.99."...
Is Todd Gurley actually vegetarian? You have to wonder after watching this Carl's Jr. commercial starring the Los Angeles Rams running back. The spot shows Gurley supposedly biting into the California Classic Double Cheeseburger, but it's blatantly obvious that the burger isn't real—it's a digitally inserted photo that isn't fooling anyone.
Check out the YouTube comments—almost every one is mocking. "That CGI burger is as inflated as your prices," says one. Says another: "Feel free to send me some burgers at my email. Thank you. Also save them in photoshop so I can eat them at a higher res! Thanks!"
The ad has 92 likes and 700 dislikes on YouTube, as of this writing....
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Shoe brand Hari Mari has a new line of flip flops done in partnership with baseball glove maker Nokona. These aren’t just any flip flops, though. They have a special chip inside of them that makes them smart. Allegedly. I understand that “brands” need a better way of getting insights into the types of people that buy their products, but this is a very silly way to do it. For the life of me, I cannot conceive of anyone who will willingly download an app for their flip flops. Big retail brands have a difficult time getting consumers to download apps. I can’t see a smaller brand—for flip flops, no less, hardly something you buy all the time—finding much success, either. If done correctly—like Under Armour’s Gemini 2 sneakers—I like the idea of shoes that can either collect data about how I’m walking or running, and act like a hands-free fitness tracker. Unfortunately, the “smart” tech that Hari Mari is using is really just dedicated to getting more information about the people that buy its products....
“Many of our global clients have already requested that we block this site on our activity.”
An employee for the agency described it to BuzzFeed News as a “preventative measure”, as online advertising is assigned to websites algorithmically.
Omnicom handpicks the sites their clients’ ads run on, which is known as a whitelist, whereas ad exchanges or networks such as Google’s typically work on a blacklist where brands specify which sites not to run on.
The email from management added: “If you are running activity through ad networks such as MediaIQ/Regital, Quantcast & RocketFuel it is worth reaching out to your rep and making sure Breitbart is blacklisted and request a URL level site report over the past 30 days which all should be able to provide.”...
LL Bean is in a tough spot today. The brand is struggling to maintain its political neutrality while also being praised by Donald Trump for the campaign support he received from one of its board members.
In a tweet thanking L.L.Bean heiress Linda Bean—granddaughter of founder Leon Leonwood Bean—for her support, President-elect Donald Trump told his Twitter followers to "buy L.L.Bean." He also linked to a small newsletter account run under Linda Bean's name. The president-elect's tweet was clearly a direct response to Linda Bean's appearance this morning on Fox & Friends, where she said she was being "bullied" by Trump critics over her support of a pro-Trump PAC....
It’s a cycle that has unfortunately become quite familiar over the last year with the loss of so many pop culture icons.A beloved, iconoclastic celebrity dies and we proceed to express our sadness and disbelief, particularly on social media. And in a rush to get in on the conversation, brands forget the most important rule of grieving in public: it’s not about you. Carrie Fisher’s death this week spurred remembrances of her prodigious writing talent, mental health advocacy and lacerating perspective about women in Hollywood. So Cinnabon decided to post a swiftly deleted tweet about how she had “the best buns in the galaxy.”...
Christmas – the biggest commercial event of the year – is well and truly underway. But with the number of visitors to UK shops falling by 9 per cent last year and online booming, there should be plenty of content to push people into the sales funnel. With this in mind we had a quick look at what Outbrain had to offer. Purely at random, we picked an article on poor working conditions at a JD Sports warehouse. Not very Christmassy, but in our experience it wouldn’t make any difference to the Outbrain content if it was an opt-in by Santa Claus himself. To be more specific, there should be tons of retailers firing off articles with present ideas for kids that link back to products. Or what about affiliate sites doing the same thing and kicking back links to Amazon? There was nothing, unless you’re planning to put through a PPI claim as a gift....
As Text: "Fortunately, the Air Dri-Goat features a patented, goat-like out sole for increased traction, so you can taunt mortal injury without actually experiencing it. Right about now you're probably asking yourself, "How can a trail running shoe with an outer sole designed like a goat's hoof help me avoid compressing my spinal cord into a Slinky on the side of some unsuspecting conifer, thereby rendering me a drooling, misshapen, non-extreme-trail-running husk of my former self, forced to roam the Earth in a motorized wheelchair with my name, embossed on one of those cute little license plates you get at carnivals or state fairs, fastened to the back?" To that we answer, hey, have you ever seen a mountain goat (even an extreme mountain goat) careen out of control into the side of a tree? Didn't think so." Nike pulled the ad after receiving a slew of complaints....
RLego first responded to Jones with a noncommittal statement, writing, “We continuingly evaluate and develop our partnerships and approach to those, in order to ensure that we are present on the best possible platforms for reaching children and parents.” But today, after hundreds more comments echoed Jones’s sentiment, Lego changed its tone. “Hi Bob! Our agreement with The Daily Mail has finished and we have no plans to run any promotional activity with the newspaper in the foreseeable future,” the company announced on Facebook. Stop Funding Hate, a British anti-hate group that sprung up shortly after the Brexit vote, and now lobbies companies to stop doing business with British tabloids, also pressured Lego to cut ties with the Daily Mail. Lego confirmed to the group on Twitter that it would no longer advertise in the tabloid....
Mylan and its CEO Heather Bresch are under fire. It raised the price of its EpiPen product — an essential protection for people with life threatening allergies — by a factor of five in the last eight years. Mylan’s statement defending itself clarifies what it’s doing — providing rebates — but evades the main issue of why it increased the price in the first place. Here’s the dialogue between Mylan and the public, in a nutshell: Public: Why is this thing so hellishly expensive? Mylan: We’ll help you afford it with coupons and rebates. Public: Why is this thing so hellishly expensive? Mylan: We’re on your side. It’s the insurance regulations. Public: Why is this thing so hellishly expensive??? RtMylan: We even give some away to schools!S So Mylan’s position is that it won’t explain the massive price increase on a product where it has a monopoly on a generic medication product that millions of people could die without, a product that’s essentially unchanged from past years....
He might not have much chance of winning, and he may not command the same attention in the news cycle, but there's another hopeful in the 2016 presidential election besides Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump: libertarian Gary Johnson, a socially liberal, fiscal conservative whose campaign rests on the idea that he can bridge the divide between the left and the right. Unfortunately, the branding of the Johnson campaign wasn't getting that idea across, so as a fun exercise, the Florida-based branding agency Spark decided to mock up an identity for him.
Then things got weird. Without crediting Spark or paying for the work, a contractor for the Johnson campaign stole Spark's brand identity wholesale. To add insult to injury, the contractor didn't even steal the work correctly. The execution was so bad, Spark felt obliged to publicly release a style guide to its own pilfered work, in the hopes that the Johnson campaign would start using it right.
In a statement to Co.Design, the Johnson campaign acknowledged the screw-up. "At the senior level of the campaign, we were completely unaware until receiving a media inquiry Saturday evening that our website contractor had seen and clearly used the concept and design ideas posted on the web by Spark," said Joe Hunter, communications director for the Johnson campaign. "Upon seeing the obvious connection, we immediately contacted Spark and have since had a very constructive conversation with them—hopefully with no hard feelings. It was never our intent to use anyone's creative work, spec or otherwise, without giving appropriate credit, and we regret that our contractor apparently failed to communicate our desire to use Spark's work. It won't happen again, and we look forward to continued conversations with Spark about putting their excellent work to good use in the campaign."...
Sears is struggling. Sales have been declining for years, and the company is selling off real estate and closing stores to stay afloat. Analysts say that the stores that remain open are shells of what they once were and that it's only a matter of time before the retailer goes bankrupt. We visited a Sears store in Richmond, Virginia, to see what is going wrong....
Back in 2004, media and TV personality Martha Stewart was sentenced to five months in jail for obstructing a federal securities investigation. To pass the time during her incarceration, Stewart did what she does best: cooking and crafts. Speaking at a Daily Mail brunch session at the Cannes Lions advertising festival on Thursday, Stewart said the food inside was around three years past its expiry date. "That's why I made jam out of the crab apples on the trees," she added. Aside from making jam, Stewart also turned her hand to ceramics. As a child she'd go to ceramic classes at the weekend, so she quickly signed up to a ceramics class in prison too, at a place called Alderson....
Cannes Lions 2016 has its first truly cringeworthy moment, in the form of a party invitation seeking "attractive females and models only." The email went out to a number of festival participants who planned to attend The Wednesday Party, an event sponsored by digital agency VaynerMedia and media company Thrillist Media Group with a musical performance by Wyclef Jean. UPDATE: Thrillist founder and CEO Ben Lerer responded to the controversy via an internal staff email that appears in part at the bottom of this story. A female agency executive tells Adweek that she and two female colleagues received the email while having lunch in Cannes on Tuesday. One of them forwarded it to women's advocate and agency veteran Cindy Gallop, who subsequently shared it on Twitter and wrote, "It's 2016, @vaynermedia @thrillist. This is not how you party at @cannes_lions." The email was sent by events company iGetIn. Its key section reads (emphasis via the sender of the message): "Thank you for your interest in attending!! Please be aware that this specific list is for attractive females and models only." The note, which was also shared by members of the public Facebook group Cannes for Cannesseurs, then instructs male attendees to "contact the PR departments of the respective sponsors" if they want to get into the party. It requests that women interested in attending send "recent untouched photos and/or your Instagram/Facebook links for you and each of your additional female guest [sic]," adding, "once we have reviewed we will send you specific entry details." ...
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So United Airlines and Pepsi weren't hurt by recent controversies? Interesting proposition but I'm not sure I buy it.