Nazi symbols on subway cars, creepy jokes about date rape, QR codes leading to porn sites.
Brands blundered, offended and groveled their way through another banner year for facepalm-worthy marketing fails in 2015.
Transgressions ranged from tone-deaf failures to read the room to abject misogyny or sexism to errors so embarrassing that they can only be explained by a complete lapse in common sense.
The brand outrage cycle has become so commonplace that it’s something of a ritual process at this point: Brand does something boneheaded or offensive, social media reacts with outrage or mockery, brand pulls the offending item and apologizes, life goes on.
Still, there’s something oddly appealing about the sight of a brand that’s invested so much in trying to appear friendly and warm becoming more human by actually falling flat on its face.
In the spirit of that schadenfreude — and an everlasting belief in redemption — here are some of the most memorable advertising mishaps of the year to date.
People decided they really weren’t “#UpForWhatever” when a slogan printed on Bud Light bottles suggested its drinkers remove the word “no” from their vocabulary.
The tagline, intended to fit into the caution-to-the-wind message of its millennial-aimed campaign, struck many as a disturbing endorsement of rape, and provoked plenty of online outrage and mockery.
The self-proclaimed “King of Beers” later apologized and pulled the offending bottles from store shelves.
Bloomingdale’s apparently missed the lesson of Bud Light’s mess, and decided to see it and raise it one with a creepy print ad that encouraged people to spike their best friend’s eggnog when they’re not looking.
To make matters worse, the tagline accompanied a photo of a man leering at a woman as she faces the other direction.
The department store later apologized for the incomprehensibly ill-conceived copy and admitted it was “inappropriate and in poor taste.”
One might think that when advertising a show based in an alternate reality where Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan actually won World War II, there’d be a careful line to walk in order to avoid dredging up unnecessarily alarming reminders of two of the most brutal regimes in recent history.
Amazon apparently thought otherwise and thus proceeded to plaster New York subway cars with imagery of the two Axis Powers to promote its new show Man in the High Castle. The online shopping giant decked out train seats with modified versions of the Nazi Germany coat of arms and the Rising Sun flag of Imperial Japan.
The ads were later removed after public outcry, including condemnation from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Dear @Airbnb These passive-aggressive bus kiosk ads are *not cool* No love, the librarians https://t.co/rdo39E7sdz pic.twitter.com/Lf3TCAYYbw
— jessamyn west (@jessamyn) October 21, 2015
After years of skirting San Francisco’s hotel laws, Airbnb finally gave into the city’s demands that it pay its taxes this year. To mark the occasion, the home rental company decided it would run some ads that let San Franciscans know just how lucky they were that it was.
But residents didn’t quite see it that way, and the bus stop and billboard ads implying that the city services should be grateful for the $12 million Airbnb was providing came off as a passive-aggressive jeer on the eve of the vote on a city ordinance that could significantly hamper the startup’s business.
The ads were quickly scrapped after public backlash and the company went on to win its political battle, but the tone-deaf message still left a bad taste for many San Franciscans.
Like a person jilted by one too many left swipes, Tinder appeared to lose its mind when it fired off more than 30 ranting tweets in response to a week-old article about the seedier side of dating app culture in Vanity Fair.
The meltdown, in which the company attacked Vanity Fair writer Nancy Jo Sales, claimed it had users in North Korea and made weird references to “the Tinder generation,” made Tinder a laughingstock on social media for days after.
While a company spokesperson admitted the tweets may have been an “overreaction,” newly reinstated Tinder CEO Sean Rad recently stirred the pot once again when he seemingly threatened Sales with “background research” he claimed to have done on her in a gaffe-filled newspaper interview.
If Tinder is trying to make its brand synonymous with unbridled passion, it’s certainly succeeding — though that’s not necessarily a good thing.
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Super Bowl Sunday: A day for football, beer, wings and…dead children?
Nationwide Insurance deflated everyone’s game day when it decided that the commercial break during the biggest sporting event of the year was the best time to bring up the household perils that can lead to preventable child deaths.
The company ran a 45-second ad featuring a little boy with a cute, playful tone up until it dropped a bombshell two thirds of the way through: The kid had died in a household accident.
For it’s part, Nationwide stood by the ad, claiming it was designed to start a national conversation. “If it saved one child, it’s worth it,” the company’s chief marketing officer told Mashable at the time.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10206942549392802&set=o.119821703989&type=1
A German man’s “hot ketchup” proved to be a little spicier than he bargained for when he followed a QR code on the back of the bottle to a porn site.
Heinz quickly apologized for the snafu and explained that the bottle was a remnant of an old campaign that led to a domain the company no longer owned. Once Heinz left the URL, someone had taken over the site and turned it into porn.
Luckily for Heinz, most people don’t actually have any interest in QR codes on ketchup bottles.
Image: Bic
The South African division of pen maker Bic commemorated National Women Day this year with an inconceivably sexist ad that implied that thinking is a man’s trait while women really excel at looking good.
“Look like a girl, act like a lady, think like a man, work like a boss #HappyWomensDay,” read the tagline, placed next to a stock photo of a woman in a business suit smiling.
After a tsunami of social media backlash, Bic quickly removed the ad and apologized, claiming the message was inspired by a post on a blog about women in business.
9. IHOP tweets terrible boob joke
Uh @IHOP I really must advise against. pic.twitter.com/wFKzP1YDSR
— Katie Mack (@AstroKatie) October 18, 2015
IHOP apparently decided this year that the one thing its social media strategy was missing was the voice of an immature frat bro who likes to insult girls.
The pancake purveyor sent out a regrettable tweet comparing its fluffy flapjacks to women’s breasts in the form of a sexist joke.
“Flat but has a GREAT personality,” the tweet read, over an image of a pancake stack.
The joke fell predictably flat, and many bemused Twitter users compared IHOP’s Twitter presence to the personality of a “creepy uncle.”
The breakfast chain quickly apologized, but the tweet did seem to fit with the personality IHOP has crafted for itself on the platform. For instance, the month before, it tweeted , “the butter face we all know and love” over a stack of pancakes topped with a dollop of butter.
Under Armour Pulls Iwo Jima-inspired ‘Band of Ballers’ T-shirt http://t.co/lwu5yzULtK pic.twitter.com/lOklKjN0PJ
— EpicTimes (@ourepictimes) May 18, 2015
If there’s one surefire way for brands to reliably offend vast segments of the population (besides the obvious date rape jokes and such), it’s trivializing a violent historical event with a cutesy shtick to sell products.
That’s what Under Armour did when it rolled out a T-shirt that riffed off a monument to a bloody World War II battle that killed thousands of American marines with a group of basketball players raising a hoop and the slogan, “Band of Ballers.”
The athletic apparel company eventually pulled the product and apologized after a wave of online outrage:
Under Armour should have taken a lesson from Urban Outfitter’s disastrous attempt to sell blood-stained Kent State sweaters (which was undeniably more offensive): Historical mass violence does not make for good advertising fodder — especially when it happened less than a lifetime ago.
YIKES: Disney Japan apologizes for posting insensitive tweet on Nagasaki anniversary http://t.co/OpvDrZ4lzu pic.twitter.com/WuQBQykTEa
— FOX 32 News (@fox32news) August 11, 2015
This one is a bit too inexplicable for the list, but it deserves mention if only for the strange context surrounding it.
Disney Japan had to apologize after it tweeted a message that translates to “Congrats on a trifling day” on the 70th anniversary of the day the U.S. military dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki — a date observed with obvious solemnity in the country.
Even more bizarre: According to Kotaku, the account has a long history of marking Japanese World War II tragedies with similarly ill-timed quips about the date.
Any memorable mistakes we missed? Let us know in the comments.
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