These days, as it’s all about advertising and marketing and brands and new businesses and startups, we tend to see a lot of new promoting strategies of various products. But if any brand does even a small or a simple mistake, comments of criticism flood on social media handles such as Twitter and Instagram.
10 Huge Marketing Mistakes By Big Brands So Far
1. Heineken’s tagline
The tagline of Heineken’s ‘light’ beer is “sometimes lighter is better” while the ad displays a scene where a bartender is serving beer past 3 black people to the white-skinned people. Thousands of tweets on how terribly racists this ad was, posted on Twitter by offended people.
2. The Blackface
Prada and Gucci designed a kind of sweater that raised many questions on racism. A woolen balaclava jumper was designed and released in stores in February 2019 that kind of looked like a blackface. It stretched up around the mouth of a person who wears it and the cut-out had thick red lips.
Balaclava knit top by Gucci. Happy Black History Month y’all. pic.twitter.com/HA7sz7xtOQ
— Rashida Renée (@evilrashida) February 6, 2019
3. Dolce & Gabbana
Another racist ad where they showcase a Chinese woman try and fail to eat Italian food with chopsticks. People got super offended over such a display of Chinese people lacking etiquette and knowledge of other cultures.
4. Dove
Dove had been really successful for its marketing strategies from the very beginning but in May 2017, it launched 7 restricted edition bottles that had separate shape designs for different body shapes of women. It failed horribly!
Dove’s new body-positive #packaging might be on-message, but it backfired anyways. https://t.co/nbkCaFfDsh pic.twitter.com/XpoGw2C9c4
— Rasor (@RasorMC) May 19, 2017
5. Department of Education
DOE tweeted a very nice quote on their Twitter page but they misspelled the name of the person who actually quoted it.
Education must not simply teach work – it must teach life. – W.E.B. DeBois pic.twitter.com/Re4cWkPSFA
— U.S. Department of Education (@usedgov) February 12, 2017
6. The Audi Commercial
One of the Audi commercials had this scene where a woman, on the day of her son’s marriage, goes to see her about to be daughter-in-law and tries to inspect her face if it’s really alright. Then she makes gestures where she approves of this girl with the tagline that says, “an important decision must be made carefully”
A woman compared with a car? Really?
7. Estee Lauder
A foundation ‘Double Wear Nude Water Fresh Makeup SPF25’ was released with around 30 shades and most of them were just for those women who were light-skinned.
8. Victoria’s Secret
Ed Razek who is a chief marketing officer of Victoria’s Secret made many bad comments about the woman who are not really skinny such as “the retailer has no plans to add larger sizes to its lingerie range” and “We market to who we sell to, and we don’t market to the whole world.”
9. H&M
H&M displayed an African Americal kid as a model and the tagline went “Coolest Monkey in The Jungle.” They apologized for it, later.
H&M has appointed a diversity manager after dealing with the fallout from using a black child to advertise a hoodie with the slogan “coolest monkey in the jungle” https://t.co/QK2tetYYML pic.twitter.com/TxmJ7tnrKD
— CNN (@CNN) January 18, 2018
10. Snapchat
In March 2019, Snapchat ran a very stupid ad where they ask users if they slap Rihanna or punch Chris Brown indicating the domestic violence incident of 2009 when they both were dating.
Such shame, Snapchat!
Snapchat pulled this tone deaf ad that made light of Chris Brown’s assault on Rihanna pic.twitter.com/rD9ZBQ0HXt
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) March 16, 2018
