Here are some of the dumbest things corporations have ever done!
9 - Krispe Creme - KKK Wednesday
I think we can all agree that the KKK is a bad thing. And despite their recent small
resurgence, most of America rightfully considers them to be a pariah. So to call Krispy Kreme's
mistake in February of 2015 an oversight, would be rather generous.
A Krispy Kreme store in Hull, England must not have been totally privy to the implication
that a promotion known as KKK Wednesday would have. While attempting a play on words, they
created something called the "Krispy Kreme Klub." The group's mission was innocent
enough, which was to give kids a week long program to take part in during a school holiday.
However, when advertising this program, they coined the term "KKK Wednesday." To make
matters worse they scheduled other activities during the week such as "Colouring Tuesday"
and "Face Painting Thursday." Seriously, you can't make this stuff up. Maybe we can
give them some leeway here since the store was in England and people there don't have
to witness a bunch of racist clowns parading around draped in bedsheets. But still, someone
should have caught this.
After the ensuing PR nightmare, Krispy Kreme apologized for the offensive acronym and reiterated
that the mistake was unintentional. Nevertheless, I'm pretty blown away by their lack of foresight...great,
now I'm in the mood for perfect doughnuts.
8 - Fox - Selling Star Wars
We all know by now that Star Wars has become an institution. It's taken a lifeform of
its own, with a world full of characters, creatures and planets that most people could
never have dreamed up. But in 1977, perhaps before the executives at 20th Century Fox
understood just how freaking big Star Wars would become, they figured signing over all
Star Wars Merchandise to George Lucas was a smart business idea. Lucas was actually
entitled to a $500,000 salary, but instead he came to the execs with a proposition. In
exchange for a $350,000 cut in his paycheck, he asked for two things. 1. He asked for all
merchandising rights, and 2, he asked for the rights to any sequels. Merchandising just
wasn't a huge cash flow to studios back then, and plus, Star Wars wasn't expected
to take off the way that it did of course.
That, as it turns out, was an epic mistake on the studio's part.
By most estimations, Stars Wars merchandise has netted over $27 Billion dollars as of
2016. Yes, that's 27 BILLION dollars, with a b! According to Forbes, that's the most
lucrative deal between a single person and a large studio. So yeah, it's pretty hard
to make a larger mistake than that one.
7 - Urban outfitters - Racist Monopoly
Over the years, Urban Outfitters has made an art form out of PR mistakes. Whether it
was selling shirts that say "Everybody Loves a Jewish Girl" or "New Mexico: Cleaner
than Regular Mexico" this company has a knack for pissing everyone off.
But they made an especially dumb move when they introduced a board game called Ghettopoly,
a spinoff of Monopoly but with an offensive and stereotypical twist. The board game lampoons
stereotypes of poor neighborhoods. Users can buy stolen property, pimp hoes, build crack
houses and engage in a number of nefarious activities.
Needless to say this didn't go over all that well with the public, in particular civil
rights leaders and many black people. Sure, the game was probably meant to be funny, but
come on, couldn't they have envisioned the public backlash? I dunno, maybe critical thinking
isn't a strong suit of a company who sells overpriced V-neck tees. DEEP V-necks for everyone!
6 - Western Union - no to the phone
You wouldn't know it now by stopping at a convenience store, but Western Union used
to be a legit titan of industry. Now this was back during the 19th century when Western
Union had a monopoly of sorts on the telegraph, which was cutting edge technology back then.
Alexander Graham Bell, as everyone should know, patented the first practical telephone.
He offered to sell the patent to Western Union for $100,000, or about $2 million by today's
standard once you factor in inflation. But Western Union's president, William Orton
thought the idea was stupid. "It has no commercial possibilities, what use could this
company make of an electronic toy?"
It didn't take long for Otron to realize the magnitude of his mistake. As legend has
it he later opined that if he could buy the patent for this so called "electric toy"
for $25 million, it would be a bargain. Bell and his investors though wouldn't even sell
the patent for that much. They all became millionaires, and Western Union devolved into
what it is now. A helpful staple in the world of scammers and fake businessmen on Cragislist.
5 - Philip Morris - Benefits of Smoking
Of all the difficult and mentally taxing jobs out there, working in the PR department for
a large Tobacco company has gotta be one of the toughest. And when said large Tobacco
company goes out and releases an incredibly asinine statement, the aforementioned difficult
job probably becomes nearly impossible.
In 2000, Philip Morris, one of biggest Tobacco Companies in the U.S, contracted the services
of a consulting to firm to research the financial benefits of smoking following concerns raised
by the Czech health ministry that smoking's costs outweighed its fiscal benefits. What
exactly Philip Morris hoped to glean from this twisted study is anyone's guess. But
the consulting firm reported that the cost benefit of early deaths from smoking, coupled
with a cigarette tax, outweighed the economic costs of healthcare and various smoking related
costs.
In other words, Philip Morris implied that the Czech Republic's government should be
happy for people to buy cigarettes, smoke them and die early. What they found was that
the Czech government collected about $147 million in tax revenue from a tax on cigarettes,
and unless the tax was double the actual price of the cigarettes, Philip Morris made a hell
of a lot more than that. Then when smokers die early, the government saved something
like $30 million each year in health care costs, pensions and public housing.
So everybody wins, except for the people who become addicted to cigarettes, get a really
deadly disease, die an unnatural death, and are missed dearly by their friends and family.
Anti-smoking groups were outraged and even though Philip Morris tried to back away from
the study, it further cemented their status as merchants of death.
4 - Cartoon Network - Guerrilla Marketing
In 1898 H.G Wells wrote a novel called The War of the Worlds. The story describes an
epic battle between humanity and alien invaders. It's a pretty cool book if you've never
read it. So fast forward to 1938 when Orson Welles directed and narrated a radio drama
based on the book. Part of the dramatization was to satirize news briefs depicting an alien
invasion. However, many listeners tuned in about 30 minutes late due to other programming
and some people thought there was an actual alien invasion. Panic ensued, though I suppooooose
they eventually got it all sorted out. People were pissed and accused the media of creating
fake news. But things worked out well for Orson Welles as he went on to direct Citizen
Kane in 1941.
Anyway, I tell you all of that to tell you this. You may have seen the somewhat obscure
cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. It depicts the misadventures
of fast food menu items, such as a meatball, a Soda and a box of french fries.
Anyway, a guerilla marketing campaign for the show caused a bomb scare in Boston back
in 2007. Someone made magnetic light versions of the characters and hung them all over the
city. Apparently they kinda looked like bombs and places they chose to hang them near, such
as hospitals, bridges and highways, was enough to royally freak people out.
The weird thing is that similar campaigns went down in other cities without incident.
Regardless, Boston officials were pissed and Turner Broadcasting, the parent company of
Cartoon Network was forced to apologize.
3 - CITC - Swastika Boots
There aren't many things people agree on anymore. Need proof? Try browsing the comment
section of any given YouTube video...probably even this one. Having said that, most Americans,
minus Richard Spencer and company, can agree that the nazis were bad. So you can imagine
the PR nightmare that ensued after Conal International Trading Company sold boots that left Swastika
imprints.
In January of 2017 someone on Reddit posted a picture of the sole of the boot right beside
of a picture with imprints that looked like swastikas. Well as you can imagine, the internet
did that thing it does where it makes something go viral and everyone has fun with it...at
the expense of the company of course.
Now to be fair, the California based company obviously didn't mean to do this. They blamed
the mistake on Chinese manufacturers and quickly pulled them off the shelves. But the damage
was done. Ironically the boots in question were military style and perhaps the funniest
part were the reviews on amazon. "Great for marching into Poland, but not good for
much else" one wise-ass reviewer wrote.
When you're going to design the bottoms of boots, refrain from using any design that
could potentially be mistaken for swastikas!
2 - Bud Light - "Up For Whatever"
If you've ever watched the Super Bowl then you've likely figured out that Beer companies
like to make edgy commercials. Okay, that's cool, many beer drinkers probably like edgy
humor anyway, so that's mostly harmless, right?
Well it is, except for when it isn't. In 2013, Anheuser-Busch, the parent company of
Bud Light launched a campaign called "Up for Whatever." The whole idea was to inspire
people to live spontaneously, to go wherever the night takes them and to open their mind
up to new adventures, or something like that. I'm paraphrasing at this point. But the
public didn't quite embrace this campaign the way the beer company thought they would.
As part of this ambitious free spirited campaign, Bud Light would put weird slogans on each
of their bottles. One in particular read "The perfect beer for removing 'no' from your
vocabulary for the night."
Now you go ahead and connect the dots here and think of some of the awful albeit hopefully
unintentional implications something like that would have.
Anyways, people on social media sure went in Anheuser-Busch. According to a story from
Entrepreneur, one wise guy tweeted "Bud Light: The official beer of rape culture"
while a smartass on Reddit wrote "Remember, no always means no...especially if the question
is 'do you want a Bud Light."
To compound the problem they tweeted out a message on St. Patrick's Day telling people
to pinch anyone who wasn't #UpForWhatever.
Anheuser-Busch released a statement in reference to the thing about removing no from your vocabulary
saying it "missed the mark" and that "they regretted it." They did however, defend
the campaign as a whole and their watered down tasting light beer.
1 - AIG - The Corporate Retreat
In September of 2008 the world economy was in utter chaos. In America, a federal bailout
package helped keep many companies such as AIG afloat. In their case, the insurance company
received $85 billion from the Federal Reserve...aka tax payer's money. Now we can argue for
and against the merits of the bailout all day if we wanted, but what AIG did just days
later was just mind-numbingly stupid.
One of the company's subsidiaries sent corporate executives on a retreat to a five star resort
in Dana Point California. The whole shebang cost around $443,000 as AIG spent a few days
at the St. Regis Resort Monarch Beach wooing high profile insurance agents. The public
backlash was so severe that hey canceled future retreats, as did many other companies who
received federal bailout money. This caused many resorts to lose money and even go out
of business, something Forbes magazine referred to as "The AIG Effect." When a blunder
by a company is the basis for an entire phenomenon, well that's pretty bad.
The economy has been on the up and up for years and corporate retreats are becoming
a thing again, so at least the effects weren't long lasting.
Here's what's next!
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