Disastrous Marketing Campaign Mistakes to Avoid

3 min read
Jun 27, 2016 12:21:38 PM

Mistakes happen. It is a part of life. And, unfortunately, sometimes those mistakes are huge and disastrous. Depending on the company or brand snafus of this caliber can be career ending. So, to help you feel better about a few mix-ups you’ve committed, here are some of the most high-profile marketing disasters that have happened to big companies. marketing campaign mistakes to avoid

Dr. Pepper Tries to Mess with Axl Rose

Whether you are a fan of Guns N Roses or not, you are probably familiar with its notorious and charismatic front man, Axl Rose. Fans will remember that it took seemingly forever (15 years) for the band’s Chinese Democracy album to come out. Due to the delay, it became a huge joke with the media mocking Rose over whether or not the album would ever be released.

In 2008, in an attempt to garner some publicity (and seemingly humiliate a rock icon), Dr. Pepper promised a free can of soda to everyone in America if the album was not released by the end of the year. Well, in November 2008, Chinese Democracy was released, and Dr. Pepper was in the hot seat. Not only did they not have a system in place to give away free soda, they never expected they would actually have to. A hastily built website crashed several times under the weight of too many clicks, very few people got free soda, and the company was eventually sued by Rose for failing to deliver on its promise and for not having permission to use the band’s name in the promotion. Moral of the story if you are going to go big, be ready in case someone calls your bluff. Oh, and don’t mess with Axl Rose.

American Airlines Underestimate Americans

Hey, here’s a cool idea: let’s come up with an airline promotion that allows purchasers to fly free for life. That’s precisely what American Airlines did in 1981 with its “AAirpass” campaign—for $250,000 you could fly first-class, anywhere you wanted, anytime you wanted for the rest of your life. Oh, and for an extra $150,000 you could bring a buddy along every time.

As it turns out, it wasn’t just corporate executives and high rollers who jumped on board. A lot of people did, and once they got a taste of the good life, they began travelling with reckless abandon and quickly recouped their initial investment. (The urban legends attached to this one are fantastic). American Airline drastically underestimated the response and the power of “free,” especially since all of those flights were not without cost to the company. After several years, AA realized that some frequent flyers were earning in excess of $1 million dollars in free flights every year! Finally, in 1994 the company halted the program and (or course) hired fancy lawyers to investigate fraud. So, in this case, the promotion worked too well—I guess too much of a good thing can be a bad thing.

Apple Learns Not Everybody Likes U2

Moving into the digital age, Apple had a huge snafu several years ago when it tried to force-feed the new U2 album, Songs of Innocence, to everyone with an iPhone. Apparently, Apple had spent a fortune securing the rights to the album and thought everyone should have it for free. Unfortunately, not everyone agreed. In fact, the majority of the 500 million iTunes users did not, and Apple was shamed into providing instructions on how to remove the offending album from libraries across the globe. The moral here is that people do not being forced into anything, even if it is a free album. Everyone, U2 included, would have been better off without this guerilla marketing disaster.

Since there have been so many high-profile disasters we could only focus on a few, but it makes you realize that big-budget marketing must be thought through thoroughly. Edgy and provocative can be enticing, but make sure you look at ideas from multiple angles and points of view. If something can possibly be construed as sexist, racist, ageist, or classist, it probably will be and the backlash will be swift. No one is safe in the digital age of social media and smart phones—one wrong ad will quickly be spread across the Internet and live in infamy even after a company has removed it (I’m looking at you, Bloomingdales).

While we can’t promise that you will never make a mistake, we can promise that our free website guide will help reduce the chances of them happening on your website.

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