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The 50th anniversary publication of Roald Dahl's children's classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is leaving a bad taste in some mouths. Controversy surrounds the cover of the Penguin Modern Classics edition, which eschews Willy Wonka's fanciful factory, golden tickets, Oompa-Loompas and other familiar story elements. Instead, we get a stylized image of a young girl, quaffed to the hilt in colorful bows and silks, sitting in her mother's lap.
Detractors are denouncing the shot for sexualizing kids, and they deride its sleazy '60s vibe as inappropriate for a story geared toward young people. They have a valid point, though in fairness, the broader meaning of the image is open to all sorts of interpretations. (It's not overtly sexual. I mean, we don't see Wonka's willy, thank goodness.)...
The first half of 2014 is already in the books, and it looks like a lot of marketers and companies didn’t learn anything from last year about social media. Many brands still made a number of bad judgments and stumbled when it came to handling their social profiles, which led to backlash and a tarnished image for some.
Mistakes can happen anytime, and with half the year already over, now is a great time to discuss some of 2014’s biggest marketing and social media blunders so far. With five full months ahead, this should serve as a great lesson for all individuals, brands, and companies trying to market themselves to the public.
Here are some things to keep in mind: - It’s easy to post things on social media, especially on Facebook and Twitter. Remember, though, that backlash can come just as swiftly and easily. Sure, people make mistakes from time to time, but with all the previous instances, everyone should know by now how not to act in public, especially if you’re representing a brand known the world over....
The great thing about social media is that it allows whatever stupid thing you want to say to reach your audience instantly. The terrible thing about social media is that it allows whatever stupid thing you want to say to reach your audience instantly. It takes about 30 seconds of thought to accurately gauge whether your brilliant marketing gimmick will build brand engagement or be prosecuted as some kind of hate crime in certain countries in Europe.
The folks on this list did not take those 30 seconds......
On July 7th Marks and Spencer revealed that their online sales were down 8% v(compared to their typical 20% increases previously). What was conspicuously absent was any mention of the £150m investment in the site that they had been eager to boast about on launch in February.
M&S have a team of 50 software developers along with a graduate scheme and a specialist ‘digital lab’ dedicated to fostering a ‘start-up’ culture around the project, accompanied by management from the likes of Laura Wade-Gery – ex-head of Tesco.com and Tesco Direct. Together this seemed like a recipe for success, complimented by a generous budget that appeared to reflect M&S’s determined ambition to be taken more seriously by the modern world.
It’s difficult to pick apart where M&S might have faltered with the limited details and metrics they have made available, however it is possible to create a list of suggestions as to where they may have had problems. Should you want specific examples of broken links, error pages, incompatible browsers, unexplained changes to orders, and a whole host of other issues, simply check out the posts from customers to the M&S facebook page. From those communications alone, you could write a ‘how not to do e-commerce’ book!...
Businesses and celebrities are supposed to be professional, so why are there constantly mistakes being made, sometimes by even the largest of companies? Well, the answer is because there’s a human behind those Facebook post and endless tweets.
From bad grammar to getting visibly frustrated and engaging in flame wars, there are lessons to be learned from the social media faux pas of others....
Healbe finished up its Indiegogo scampaign for its miracle, calorie-counting wristband on April 15 with promises to ship in June. As we have reported previously, even if the product was suddenly scientifically possible (which it isn’t), that was a really tough deadline to meet. For one thing, manufacturing a complicated electronic product in two months would be unheard of and, for another, when photos of its prototype leaked online, hardware experts who we showed them to commented that it looked rough and primitive.
Well, after Healbe had teased that it would be releasing its June delivery schedule this week… it turns out we were right....
...It seems that luck is a simple affair – if you don’t get a parking ticket while having sex in your car, you’re one of the lucky ones amongst us. However, if you don’t self-report as ‘lucky’ in an online survey, it’s clearly your own fault: However, two in five people who say they are unlucky have never done anything superstitious to turn around their luck with 61 per cent of them saying they would happily walk under a ladder.
There may be a very good reason why people considered to be unlucky haven’t gone out of their way to ‘turn their luck around’, namely that that isn’t really a thing. But, far be it to point out such minor details, when the stakes of poor luck are so high: Unlucky people are also twice as likely to be single and will probably not have any children.
Naturally, the company who paid for this ‘research’ have their own vested axe to grind:
A global ad agency has sparked outrage with its mattress firm cartoon promo showing Pakistani teen Malala Yousafzai being shot in the head.
Ogilvy & Mather is catching serious heat for the sick illustration for Indian bedding firm Kurl-On that sees the young schoolgirl "bouncing back" from being hit by a Taliban gunman.
In the advert Malala is shot in the face, falls backwards covered in blood and is treated in hospital.
But then, after bouncing off the mattress, she receives an award wearing her trademark pink and gold hijab....
Note to self: Never mention a celebrity on Twitter from a company account. Recently, it hasn't worked out well for two different brands.
A few weeks ago, people were in an uproar over Red Sox slugger Big Papi's selfie with the President. Then, last week, Katherine Heigl issued a lawsuit to Duane Reade for posting a paparazzi photo of her on their Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Here's what they posted on Twitter (Facebook's post was almost identical)...
Before the “selfie” term was coined, many people were already figuring out ways to take photos of themselves...
Before the “selfie” term was coined, many people were already figuring out ways to take photos of themselves, whether it be with digital cameras, smartphones, or even film cameras back in the day. Safe to say “selfies” aren’t exactly new per se.
However with the term having been officially coined, it seems that there is now a mental disorder associated with it as well.
According to the American Psychiatric Association, the act of taking a selfie can be considered a mental disorder. The disorder has been labeled selfitis and is defined as an obsessive compulsive desire to take photos of oneself and publish it onto social media, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and so on..
Two years ago Savannah Peterson worked as the head of marketing for a design firm in Silicon Valley. She was introduced to a company making a newfangled photo device. The gadget, called Instacube, ...
Instacube launched a Kickstarter campaign in August of 2012 with the promise of a March 2013 ship date. The Internet fell in love with Instacube, and the device raised nearly three times what it sought. Cut to March of 2014 and not one Instacube has been shipped. Today, at a one-on-one interview at South by Southwest, Peterson told her story....
It worked. Peterson was able to wrangle an article by Engadget, and from there the dominoes fell. Instacube was on CNET, Mashable, and TechCrunch. The campaign had intended to raise $250,000. Within the first 24 hours it had secured more than $100,000. By campaign’s end D2M had raked in $621,049.
Then D2M had to build it. This is where things begin to fall apart. The March 2013 deadline came and went and zero devices had been shipped. Backers, understandably, became impatient....
Is all fair in love and marketing? Check out some recent notorious marketing moves and judge for yourself.
Fashion house Valentino has apologized for its tacky press release sent Friday enthusing that actress Amy Adams was spotted at Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s wake in New York City carrying one of their bags. In addition to misspelling the name of the bag, the Valentino rep included two photos of a grim-looking Adams – reportedly a good friend of the deceased – clutching the ridiculously expensive Italian bag....
Earth to Marketing...
When it comes to social media, is marketing really listening to consumers? If so, tell me why your social media sucks so badly?
There are thousands of reasons why consumers loathe old-school marketing. For all its promise, social marketing is not faring any better. We’re doomed if we don’t learn from the lessons and marketing mishaps of the past....
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Earlier today, Paramount Pictures Australia tweeted a poster which features the Ninja Turtles jumping from an exploding building. No problem, right? How about if the release date for the film in Australia is September 11th? Still not a problem, you say?
How about if the poster that was tweeted has the Ninja Turtles jumping from a New York City building that’s exploding with "SEPTEMBER 11" in bold lettering at the bottom? And Leonardo has a NYC pin in blue and white just so you’re extra-aware that you’re in New York City?...
Why can't movie-streaming sites deliver the selection of movies that customers obviously want? This was the question posed by a recent New York Times column, comparing undersupplied services like Netflix with unauthorized platforms like Popcorn Time.
The answer, the Times explains, is windowing—the industry practice of selling exclusivity periods to certain markets and platforms, with the result of staggered launches. But the Times fails to ask a more fundamental question: why do streaming sites have to listen to Hollywood's windowing demands in the first place?...
Marketers spend most of their time trying to appeal to their target demographics, but when it comes to women, many of them are missing the mark. Given that women make up half the population and have a disproportionate amount of purchasing power, isn’t it in your best interest to try to understand them?
Here are 23 surprising facts you probably didn’t know about women and advertising. - Women account for 85% of consumer purchases (She-conomy) - Despite this, 91% of women say advertisers don’t understand them...
...As Kiera Butler noted on Mother Jones, Chick-fil-A—whose chicken sandwich is stuffed with 27 grams of fat, 1750 milligrams of sodium, and an ingredients list almost as long as the Declaration of Independence — is an odd fit to launch a wellness site.
It’s clearly an effort to change the image of a brand that’s currently recognized nearly as much for its stance against gay marriage than for its fast food, but in doing so, Chick-fil-A is dismissing two of the cardinal rules of content creation: don’t trick your consumers, and don’t piss them off.
I can't believe this.Yes, advertisers lie. Or at least bend the truth a little. Everybody knows that, right?
WRONG. People expect to get what what they see on the billboard, but what they don’t know is that it’s impossible. I mean seriously, have you ever wondered why a Big Mac looks 1000% percent better on TV than what you get at the 2am drive thru?
A new infographic from Finances Online reveals just how far companies will go to make their products seem more appealing – from replacing actual ice cream with mashed potato for a more solid appearance to using motor oil for honey or syrup.
To show the disparity between common ads and actual products, Finances Daily compared popular food, hotel and fashion brands, revealing how different the ad images can look from actual items.....
It seems that no matter how good you think you are at cleaning, you’re just not up to scratch – missing those vital nooks and crannies where all manner of everyday dirt might hide and fester. If only there were a solution to your squalor! A spokesman for ContractCleaning.co.uk, who polled their employees, said: ‘We appear to be a nation of clumsy people, and not only that we’re lazy as well, with many people admitting they’ve never once cleaned behind the fridge.
Given that this story was created and pushed into the news by a professional cleaning company, it’s little surprise that the results condemned our cleanliness so. That said, there’s a silver lining here: ContractCleaning.co.uk created this story by polling its employees… therefore, what we’ve really discovered, if this story is true (usual caveats apply, there), is that people who hire professional cleaners to clean their homes are utterly filthy.
A brilliant and timely tweet, or a superb social media promotion that engages millions of consumers with your brand, can definitely break through and connect in ways simply not possible with traditional advertising messages. I’ve seen social media campaigns have a strong amplifying effect on the dollars spent in traditional media, and I’ve seen social media campaigns help brands to rise from obscurity to fame.
But what I see more frequently is brands trying too hard to be current, straining to entertain. In doing so, they lose the distinctive personality and character that made them unique. Think about the people you know who think they are hilarious or always struggling to be agreeable and popular. Do you feel you know who they really are? Do you like spending time with them, or do you find them pointless and obnoxious?...
Online video ads were supposed to be a marketer’s dream. Instead, many become lost in an unruly maze.
...According to the standard spiel, ads in this medium are alluring because they can be aimed at specific audiences. They can roll in front of content that people want to see. They exist in the digital space where coveted demographic groups are spending more time. It’s an enticing portrait, but one that glosses over an essential question: Is anybody watching? By many estimates, more than half of online video ads are not seen, either because they are buried low on web pages or run in tiny, easily ignored video players on those pages, or run simultaneously with other ads. Vindico, an ad management platform company, deemed 57 percent of two billion video ads surveyed over two months to be “unviewable.”...
Samsung may be learning a lesson this week that most of us observed by watching Mr. Smith a long time ago: What flies in Hollywood doesn’t having any relation to the real politick of Washington, D.C. And so it is that headlines are calling out both Samsung and Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz for “punking” the President with a moment reminiscent of Ellen DeGeneres’ selfie-fulfilling prophecy at the Oscars that did, indeed, set a record for the most retweets....
From purple ketchup to baby food for adults, these brand extensions were nothing short of miserable failures.
Brand extensions, or when a company rolls out a new product that’s still connected to their core brand, are a mainstay of the food product industry. Most are well-thought-out, field tested, and happen to make a lot of sense: Oscar Mayer’s known for its lunch meat, so why not buy little rounds of their turkey, with cheese, crackers, a drink, and dessert, all packaged up in a tidy box? Lunchables were a hit when they were rolled out in 1988 for that very reason: it made sense, and parents trusted that the brand would be able to provide a decent, complete lunch for their kid.
However, while the brand extensions we’ll be taking a look at today might have made sense to some exhausted brand development executive somewhere, they certainly weren't hits with the general public....
By now, you’ve probably read the New York Times piece that’s been making the rounds lately. If not, here’s the upshot: it concludes that Google AdWords isn’t practical for small businesses.
Unfortunately, it’s not the first time the Gray Lady has gone after AdWords, nor is it the first time that the paid search community has responded so vigorously in its defense. The real tragedy of the latest piece isn’t that AdWords has been singled out – it’s that the Times (and the business owners it interviewed) have once again missed the point....
...Stone's corporate identity has always threatened to bleed over the thin line separating satire and self-importance, so maybe it's not the best example of craft beer's direction. TheAtlantic piece drives the point home more pointedly: "So is this the future of U.S. beer consumption – a country that stumbles over itself to buy beer made with wild-carrot seed, bee balm, chanterelle mushrooms , and aged in whiskey barrels?"
It got me thinking. If the craft beer market has become a contest over the most outrageous, has craft beer finally grown up and become its nemesis, mass market beer? Allow me to demonstrate....
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Just another in a long line of marketing fails and bad PR.