Get all your news in one place.

100's of premium titles.
One app.

Start reading

Get all your news in one place.

100's of premium titles. One news app.

Start reading

Bored Panda

Indrė Lukošiūtė

55 Of The Worst PR Mistakes That Backfired And People Still Remember Them

Damage control is one of the hardest parts of public relations. Whether you’re trying to sweep something under the rug or keep it from spiraling, the margin for error is razor-thin—and sometimes, no matter what you do, it only makes things worse. It can even backfire spectacularly.

Reddit users shared what they consider the worst PR moves in history, and one thing is clear: some mistakes are simply too big to forget, no matter how badly someone wishes they could. Take a look below.

#1

Americas 'president' right now.

#2

DiGiorno's and #WhyIStayed

There was a big movement on Twitter to spread awareness of domestic a***e and how there are times where the woman doesn't realize her SO is a*****e. So women are sharing their own stories and tagging #WhyIStayed

Somebody on the marketing team at DiGiornos completely missed the tone/purpose of this and DiGiornos ended up tweeting "#WhyIStayed: He had pizza." Didn't go over so well

#3

Pepsi's contest in the Philippines in 1992. You can read about it here. Pepsi ran a contest in the Philippines that would give a lucky winner $1 million. It was based on the number on the bottle cap and the winner would be announced. Well it turned out there was a glitch and the number they announced was not a unique number, in fact, there were 800,000 caps that had that number. Pepsi retracted the winning number and a riot ensued to the point where they withdrew all but two of their non-Filipino employees because of the number of death threats. Two people died when a Pepsi delivery truck was firebombed.

There may be a lot of other horrible PR moves but I don't think any of them ended up with people dead because of it. You can thank Pepsi for taking the cake on that one.

#4

The GM robot commercial during the 2007 Super Bowl a few years ago.

A personified assembly line robot gets "replaced" by a more advanced one and is let go from the company. It's so depressed it goes to jump off a bridge.

This was right after GM had laid off over 30,000 people for almost those exact reasons. The commercial was meant to be cute.

EDIT: The reason the robot gets let go is because he messed up, not got replaced. I wrote the description from memory and then linked the video in a rush before I went to work. The point still stands about how it was a bad PR move and was in terrible taste. So for those of you pointing that out I'm sorry. Since I messed up, I might just go jump off a bridge.

#5

In order to prove that tetraethyl lead (leaded gasoline additive) was safe, the manufacturer, Thomas Midgely, Jr. poured some on his hands and inhaled it for 60 seconds during a press conference. He was later diagnosed with lead poisoning.

* That press conference was likely Standard Oil's idea. They had a knack for ridiculously bad PR moves related to leaded gasoline. Their New Jersey chemical plant manufactured tetraethyl lead gas additive for one year. In that time,

> The men who worked in the TEL building, in the clanking heat and drifting vapors, had become increasingly odd – moody, short-tempered, unable to sleep. Some of the workers started getting lost on the familiar plant grounds, had trouble even remembering their friends. And then, in October of 1924, laborers from that same building started collapsing, going into convulsions, babbling deliriously.

Of the 45 employees working with ethyl lead, [all](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,728055,00.html) were hospitalized for insanity, and 5 died within the year.

> Standard Oil issued a coolly dismissive response: “These men probably went insane because they worked too hard,” the building manager told *The New York Times*.

#6

Last year, the Pittsburgh Penguins decided to do a Q&A session on Twitter involving James Neal, a skilled player with....well, let's say that he's not exactly known for fair play. He has a history of borderline and outright dirty play, including cross-checking opponents in the face, elbowing them in the head, and also an incident of kneeing an opponent in the head.

Sample questions from various hockey fans:

* James, do you get the biggest thrill out of kneeing someone in the head or cross checking them in the head?

* Do you make rocket noises when you launch yourself at peoples' heads? if not, why?

* Do you think before cross-checking people in the head or is it just pure instinct?

* If you opened a bar how cheap would your shots be

* what part of the stick should I be holding to really lay a good cross check to someone's head?

* If a tree falls down in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does James Neal still cross check it in the face?

* what favorite memory have you robbed from one of the players you kneed to the head?

* A train leaves NYC traveling at 97 mph, another train leaves LA traveling at 76 mph, when do you headshot the child riding coach?

* if you could go back in time and play with any player in history, which one would you knee in the face?

* if you were holding a baby and dropped it on its head, would it already be unconscious from your previous elbow to the head?

* James, my roommate stole my food. should I lunge at his head, elbow him in the temple or drive my knee into his skull?

* If the moon was made of BBQ Spare Ribs, would you still leave your feet to charge at it?

* when you go into a corner and there are 3 people, and you only have 2 elbows, how do u decide which one gets kneed?

#7

Bud Light's *Up for Whatever* campaign:

“The perfect beer for removing ‘No’ from your vocabulary for the night.”.

#8

Maybe not the biggest, but Barbra Streisand's "Streisand Effect" comes to mind as a good one.

#9

How the heck has nobody mentioned:

* When McDonald's in the US did that scratchcard deal where they would give you a scratchcard which had an olympic event in it, and if the US won (medal? Gold? I don't remember) they would give you a free burger or something. Of course, they calculated it so that most of the events would be ones usually won by Soviets. Guess who boycotted the olympics that year... Brilliantly parodied by the Simpsons.

* Hoover giving away free plane tickets with their vacuum cleaners. People were buying them just to get the plane tickets, which were actually worth more than the vacuum cleaners themselves in many cases.

#10

***Jagermeister sponsors a pool party, turns the water into poison***

*The idea was pretty cool on paper if you ignore laws of physics and chemistry.*

***Marketer No.1***: *“Oh, and you know what would be really cool? If the swimming pool had this cool mist coming off of it, like in a music video or some s**t. Let’s pour liquid nitrogen into the water! Man, I wonder why nobody has tried this before!?!"*

***Marketer No.2***: *Genius!*

*Result: The victims were poisoned after staff reportedly poured nitrogen into the pool, causing a toxic cloud after the liquid reacted with the chlorine in the water.*

*When pool chlorine and liquid nitrogen combine, the result is nitrogen trichloride, a hazardous knock-out gas. People began coughing almost immediately, then passing out – all together, eight people were hospitalized, and one guy even ended up in a g*****n coma (spent 18 days in hospital).*

(it's the first link that popped up, it might be of interest in general, since the page is about marketing fails)

Edit: Guys, I just quoted the source from the link, I'm neither a chemist nor do I want to be one. All I know about chemistry is that if I eat Kellogg's Smacks, my pee smells like Kellogg's Smacks.

#11

BP's CEO Tony Hayward, after the Gulf Coast oil spill, telling reporters "I'd like my life back."

To be fair, the full quote is ""We're sorry for the massive disruption it's caused to their lives. There's no one who wants this thing over more than I do. I'd like my life back."

But the oil CEO presenting himself as the biggest victim of the oil spill that was destroying livelihoods (and the environment) was...well...a bold move, Cotton. Let's see how it plays out for him:

He was "replaced" less than a month later.

#12

Gerald Ratner was CEO of British jewellers Ratners in the 90s, before he made a speech calling his products 'total bull', wiping £500m off the value of the company and causing it to nearly fold.

#13

OJ Simpson publishing a book about how he "would have" k****d his wife.

#14

In the 1993 Canadian federal election, the ruling but unpopular Progressive Conservative party released an attack ad against Liberal leader Jean Chrétien. The ad highlighted Chrétien's bells palsy and closed with a question along the lines of, "Do you want THIS man running the country?"

Chrétien became Prime Minister, the Progressive Conservatives went from majority to fifth place and missing out on official party status. Within ten years they were absorbed by the Reform Party.

#15

"MISSION ACCOMPLISHED".

#16

LifeLock's CEO gave out his social security number and challenged people to steal his identity. Guess what happened, 13 times in a row?

While Davis said that this proved LifeLock worked since identity thieves were only successful 13 times, the FTC disagreed and fined the company $12 million for deceptive advertising in March 2010.

#17

One summer in the early 90's on long Island they launched a massive PR campaign for vacationing on L.I., come see our beautiful beaches, our historic landmarks, family vacation of a lifetime, yada yada. That was also the summer they decided to do construction on all 3 of the main east/west roadways (L.I. Expressway and Norther and Southern State Parkways). The entire summer was one endless traffic jam. I'm sure anyone who responded to the vacationing PR campaign decided to never set foot on L.I. again.

#18

#MyNYPD

I straight up have no idea what they were expecting.

For those out of the loop, # MyNYPD was a PR stunt by the NYPD to try to show the people of NY that cops are mostly good people out to protect and serve. THing is, they asked people to use the hashtag #MyNYPD to tell their stories or post post their pictures of positive encounters they might have had with the police. Of course, people used it to post pictures depicting police brutality as well as other negative headlines the NYPD has made over the years (e.g. NYPD ends man on wedding day, beats an 84 year old man bloody for jaywalking, etc.)

I had never seen anything go that sour or that fast before.

But I mean, what the hell did they think was gonna happen? Who exactly is it they figured uses hashtags #AND has nothing but rave reviews for the police nowadays?

#19

The Ludlow M******e. Miners working for the Rockefellers went on strike in Colorado. The answer? To call in the National Guard to shoot down the miners and their families.

And so the modern PR Machine was born. The Rockefellars founded the first "Public Relations" department to handle the backlash of the m******e, they also created the Rockefeller Foundation to show the world what great folks they are.

#20

Justine Sacco, the d**n communications DIRECTOR for InterActive Corp, before a trip to South Africa tweeted:

"Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!".

How does the head of PR of a large public company tweet that?

#21

Abercrombie and Fitch sold racist t-s***s and s**y thongs for little girls.

In April 2002, Abercrombie & Fitch released a line of t-shirts depicting caricatures of Asian stereotypes. Corporate commentary? "We personally thought Asians would love this T-shirt."

A month later, the company introduced racy thong underwear in childrens' sizes, aimed at girls aged 10 to 14. Corporate commentary? "The underwear for young girls was created with the intent to be lighthearted and cute.".

#22

After receiving their huge bailout in 2008, AIG hosted a 500k corporate retreat at the St. Regis resort in California.

#23

In America, John McCain's choice of running mate in the 2008 presidential election is pretty widely believed to have been entirely a PR move and most agree that it backfired pretty badly.

#24

Calvin Klein put out a bunch of creepy ads in the 1990s that looked like a adult movie director was luring scantily clad minors to his basement for a screentest. This did not go over well. (The ads were immediately pulled, and CK put out a groveling apology in a full-page NY Times ad.)

#25

Canadian here. Not sure how many of you are familiar with Jian Ghomeshi, but he's a famous television personality, known best for his interview show "Q". When the CBC fired him, he posted on Facebook that he was fired for liking " rough s*x". At first, he drew a great deal of sympathy. Then the real facts came flooding in: he was a serial a****r of women, and the CBC fired him after he had shown them pictures of a girl whose ribs he had fractured. Women began to speak publicly about his a***e, and several pressed charges. He's now on trial, facing life in prison. All from a self-pitying Facebook post.

#26

Well since your asking on Reddit: "I'm just here to talk about Rampart"

But my pick is when Phillip Morris said that deaths from smoking have "positive effects".

#27

Phillip Morris said smoking deaths have a positive effect.

According to CNN, the tobacco giant conducted the study in response to the Czech government's argument that the financial costs of smoking outweighed its benefits. Not so, said Philip Morris: smoking actually resulted in a net gain of around $147 million, including saving "between 943 million and 1.2 billion korunas (about $24 million-to-$30 million) in health-care, pension and public-housing costs due to the early deaths of smokers."

The company, of course, faced a huge public backlash as a result of the release, which was intended to create positive PR for an already-struggling industry.

#28

God d**n, I got here way to late, but I'm going to go with Texas Governor candidate Clayton Williams saying "Bad weather is like r**e, you can't control it, so you might as well sit back and enjoy it."

I think he was projected to win the race for Governor and ended up loosing after making these comments.

#29

Not one mention of Euro Disney yet? Fine, I'll be the a*****e.

Today, Disneyland Paris is a reasonably successful theme park, or so I understand. When it was first opened though, it was a disaster.

Originally called "Euro Disney," the park was conceptualized as a precise copy of the American parks, but placed in Europe.

One little thing Disney forgot to account for: Europeans and Americans have an awful lot of cultural differences.

Americans plan trips months in advance, travel hundreds of miles, and are cool with spending hours standing in long lines to ride fun rides and see their favorite characters.

European redditors, feel free to chime in, but generally speaking, Europeans aren't down with one single solitary part of that. ~~Vacations tend not to be family bonding affairs.~~ *Edit: I really don't know what I was trying to say here, but what I did say was not accurate.* Also, Europeans would generally rather float about socializing with everyone than being herded through a park and forced to stand in specific places.

But none of this compares to Disney deciding that this park would remain as alcohol-free as its American parks were at the time.

In America, alcohol is something that only adults use. In France, it's commonplace to have a little wine with dinner, even for teenagers. The French did not particularly enjoy having some American company tell them how to have fun.

There were a multitude of other blunders made by Disney in the opening of its European park, and it performed very poorly for its first few years. The primary problem was Disney's arrogance. Instead of observing the culture and researching how to *integrate* a Disney park, they believed that they could simply show up and tell people how things would be, and people would accept it because they were m**********n' Disney.

Nowadays, Disney seems to try to be a culturally inclusive company, so I think it's fair to say they learned from their mistakes.

Side note: Anyone on reddit who was *not* aware of this story now understands the reference to "Euro Itchy and Scratchy," so I've clearly not wasted my day.

#30

Jared from Subway is nailing it right now.

#31

Tom Cruise sacking his PR when he started dating Katie Holmes.

Of course, his invovlement with Scientology is long and historically documented, but the follow-up of sacking his PR woman after his divorce from Nicole Kidman took him from incredibly talented but slightly aloof character to bouncing on Oprah's sofa.

We all still love his movies, but that oscar? Forget about it. Born on the 4th July, Rain Man, Magnolia...these are performances that are old Tom Cruise. New Tom Cruise falls closer to post-'Sugar T**s' Mel Gibson.

#32

Um that time The Rolling Stone put the 'hot' boston bomber on the cover....

#33

After being exposed for using racist language, Paula Deen goes into damage control mode to prove she's not a racist, & makes her way onto talk shows with a friend - "Hollis" - who is "as black as that board... step away from that board so we can see you!" Needless to say, she ended up coming off even worse than before. Howard Stern had some funny remarks about this.

#34

Geraldo Rivera unveiling his empty cave that was supposed to be filled hidden treasure OR that M&M employee who refused to let Spielberg use his company's product in E.T. They used Reeses pieces instead, sending sales through the roof ( and cresting product placement).

#35

Apple giving away the new U2 album has got to be up there.

#36

Amy's Cafe blowing up everyone on their facebook after their terrib le episode.

#37

Malaysian Airline offering free tickets to flyers who submit their "bucket lists."

#38

**AT&T** comes to mind:

The population in the US is still reeling and angry over the revelation that major phone and tech companies have been providing data about their activities to the NSA, and now AT&T has decided to make things worse.

In proposed changes to their privacy policy, they are considering selling your information to advertisers. Brilliant move.

#39

Probably too late to the party, but in Sweden we have this one good f**k up. It's actually a government owned company the manages the hospital buildings in Stockholm, behold Locum:

This

EDIT: me and my friends have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how the hell no one at Locum caught that.... Without success obviously. Our only sane conclusion is that there is a lucky b*****d out there that got away with this.

For clarification, this was a christmas card that Locum sent to their costumers back in 2001.

#40

Bill Cosby inviting people to make a meme out of him on twitter was a pretty dumb PR move.

#41

Lars Ulrich of Metallica giving a press conference in 1999 (cant find the video) where he stated he would send the police to seize the hard drives of Napster users who download Metallica songs. He said this while waving a large ream of paper listing the Napster users who were in offense. He had trouble, it would seem, of making the connection that the people on that list were his biggest fans.

Truth is pretty much every single artist/copyright holder in America was on board with shutting down Napster and stood on sound legal ground in pursuing that. Many artists went on the record saying they were against Napster. Only f*****g Lars Ulrich was literally threatening extreme action as publicly as he did. Forever more Metallica, a band who once produced music a decade ahead of its time, will be known as 'the band that shut down Napster' and worse 'the band who sued their own fans'. Neither is true, but ~~it doesn't matter at this point~~ *Nothing Else Matters* at this point.

#42

Mitt Romney's entire campaign. He was gifted a President who had gone from wildly popular to mildly popular. A substantial portion of the population hated the Scary Black Man so much they would have voted for Putin (and said so vocally). The economy was improving but not great and a helpful Congress was doing everything to make sure it stayed not great. He literally could not s***w this up. So.....

1 - Assembles a team of advisors that read like a who's who of bad ideas proven bad. Pretty much the #1 qualification was having screwed up something horribly during the Bush or earlier Administrations.

2 - Let himself get beaten to a pulp over his tax returns. Considering he had run in 2008 he had to know it was coming. Why not release them early, quietly and declare it a non-issue? Instead it became the subject for months and then when he finally released he only released 2 years. One can only conclude that what ever was in those previous years was BAD if not releasing them was a better idea.

3 - Trumpet your business experience right until someone says "But your business did bad things" and then claim that the bad things only happened after you left......knowing full well that you were still getting a paycheck from said bad company. Everyone with a brain knows that leaders have to make decisions others dont like. If you did that, own it. No one likes a flip flopper. which leads to....

4 - His campaign manager publicly stating that everything he said to get the nomination was up for a "reset" in the general election. Way to turn off the people who voted for you already.

5 - Travel overseas to pump up your foreign policy cred. If you are a domestic guy and your number one thing is being a businessman and creating jobs, stay the hell away from anything foreign policy while running against a sitting president. You will get run over. And if you have a bit of a "religion issue" the worst place to go is Israel. The second worst might be Poland because Catholics are so fond of the LDS church. Going to both as the whitest guy on the planet screams "Final Solution!"

6 - As the whitest guy on the planet, stay the hell away from the NAACP. Nothing good comes from that. Especially when you are running against the first black guy as President. Did you really think you were going to change minds?

7 - You are the whitest guy on the planet with a rep for being a hard nosed business man who might have a bit of an issue with being less than compassionate and understanding of what average people go through in their lives. Picking as your VP the only guy whiter than you who has a hardon for gutting the social safety net to the point of thinking letting the poor have cake is too nice is just not a good idea.

8 - Run the worst convention since 68. Florida in hurricane season? Were you TRYING to bring up Katrina? You give a prime spot to Christie and dont think he is going to talk about himself? Clint and an empty chair? And oh that sea of rich white people......

9 - Have your lilly white, never had a hard day of work in her life wife talk about "lean times" and being a housewife.......at the same time her horse is in the Olympics. You were running for PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! Turn the horse into glue!

10 - Go into a debate on foreign policy with a sitting President with your prep being reading Drudge that morning. He was riding a win from the domestic debate and only needed to hold serve and not get embarrassed. Talk a lot about politics ending at the shore line and the unknown challenges that every President meets. Thank the President for representing the US well, hope to do the same and get the hell out of the building while your surrogates attack specific things. Too hard. Took the bait. Went off like a crazy man on something that only existed in the right wing echo chamber.

and 11, because this one goes to 11

11 - Say out loud in plain english what everyone thinks you feel about the "little people." Every political scientist on the planet can confirm that each candidate is really going after the 6-8% of voters who choose on or about election day while the other 92% vote straight party, but that doesnt matter. When you SAY that you dont care about almost half the people you are an idiot. When you SAY that you dont care about them because they are poor you are a f*****g idiot. When you say it at a $50,000 a plate fundraiser you deserve to get k****d on election day.

#43

Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis photographed in a tank with a leather helmet...looking like Alfred E. Newman.

Until, that is, Donald Trump accomplished the same with neither a tank, nor a helmet.

Or at least not a tank.

#44

A local classic rock station (100.7 wone in cleveland) advertised for a few months that they were closing their doors (back in the late 90s). Every one who grew up in the area loved that station and made sure to tune in for those last remaining months. They said that their last day of broadcast would be on March 31st. And at midnight, April 1st.... they called April fools. My dad still refuses to listen 20 years later. Might not be the worst in history... but not cool.

#45

When Mountain Dew decided to let the internet "Dub the Dew" and ended up getting 4chan to get these as the top votes.

Although, that was not as bad as the Patriots automating their social media resulting in this post for their 1 million followers on Twitter.

#46

MTV had a contest where Anthrax would come to your house!

Well they did. And completely destroyed the place.

#47

KFC trying to bring back Colonel Sanders. It's just creepy!

#48

Steve Ballmer acting like a raging ape during a Microsoft Conference.

#49

So, this story happened when I was very young, but I've been told it from multiple sources so I believe it.

When Barney Frank came out as gay, one news agency tasked one of their very junior reporters to call all Congressional offices and ask if their boss was gay. Of the 534 non-Barney Frank congressional offices, 533 responded "no." One office responded with a full-blown press conference wherein the Congressman denounced these scurrilous rumors about his sexuality and demanded the gossip about him end.

The common response from other elected officials and the press was "Uh, no one ever thought you were gay... Until now."

This happened in the late 70s/early 80s, but is still taught at at least one political training school as an example of how not to handle public relations.

#50

Has to be the Zimmerman telegram. During WWI, the Germans sent a telegram to Mexico, offering them Texas, NM, AZ in exchange for an alliance against America. The telegraph cables go through Britain. Sigh. Facepalm. It was of course intercepted.

Now it gets better. Mr. Zimmerman was asked if it was legit, by a friendly (ie pro-German) newswriter. Instead of dissembling, he was like, "Totes B'gotes". Sigh. Facepalm.

#51

The guys presenting the Xbone when he said "We have a system for that, its called the Xbox 360.".

#52

The Starbucks #RaceMatters debacle. Let's get a bunch of college-aged baristas asking yuppies whether it's OK to say the n-word if you're doing karaoke.