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Ratner's Jewelry deserves a mention. The store chain was doing great, making huge profits, until the owner Gerald Ratner gave a speech at an industry conference and said "People say, "How can you sell this for such a low price?", I say, "because it's total crap."" He immediately trashed the image of his stores, and sales fell so badly that Ratner was fired from his own company within a year and the name was changed.
@Raye_Wonderland You can make inexpensive things but still make them with a standard of quality. More importantly, you can't shit on your customers just because they aren't in the same social class as you (the CEO), because they're still your customers (i.e., the people who are making you so much money). The root problem is that Ratner's was saying one thing in their advertising and promotions, and then the complete opposite from the CEO's mouth. Stores like Crazy Eddy's in NY and Building 19 in Boston could theoretically get away with saying what Ratner did because their whole promotion image was "It ain't great, but it's cheap", but even they wouldn't insult their customers.
From what I've heard, he had made self-deprecating jokes about the stores' quantity-over-quality sales strategy many, MANY times before; his mistake was saying it in front of the wrong tabloid journalists, who had a field day making jokes about him.
The laws behind that Linoleum ruling are the reason Hasbro goes out of the way to remind people that Transformers is a line of "convertible toys". If they call them transforming toys, then the name becomes descriptive.
The problem with the Hoover tickets wasn't the European flight promotion- most people were flying to Western European destinations anyway and the costs were fine. The problem was they opened the promotion up to worldwide flights for the same basic price (£100), instead of raising the qualifying amount to £500 or so. Result- you could fly to Orlando, or California, or Australia if you wanted, for £100. They then tried all sorts of exemptions to getting tickets at all to reduce the cost, which vastly increased anti-brand resentment; or insisting that you had to fly from Leeds or Plymouth at 3 am, despite living in London. Eventually a Hoover repairman was held hostage by a farmer in Cumbria in the far northwest of England until he got his air tickets, millions of people who hadn't personally lost out were now boycotting Hoover and HooverUK was eventually sold out to Candy.
Bad PR ruined the movie Red Shoes. A lot of people still think it's about body shaming and actively refuse to watch it, but the story is the complete opposite.
Same thing happened with Black Swan - it's actually a great movie about a dancer's descent into madness but I remember at the time that most of the marketing and press surrounding the movie was focusing on the lesbian sex scene and it had a lot of people convinced it'd be some shitty softcore porno
The computer company (Artesian Builds) that decided to give away a computer live on RU-vid and then decided not to give it to the winner during that same live, because the winner didn't have enough social media followers.
What about that company that hosted a competition with a monetary prize, but then refused to give the prize to the winner because they “didn’t look good enough for the company’s reputation” and gave it to another person, and ended up getting sued?
When sony launched the PS1 they were going to make its mascot someone called captain blasto. However the voice actor for it Phil Hartman, was killed in a grisley murder which also impacted the simpsons, hence why we don't really see troy mcclure anymore on the show.
The Walkers Wave contest. In 2017, Walkers Crisps (the UK equivalent of Lay's potato chips) staged a contest on Twitter for tickets to the UEFA Champions League Final. Users would send in a selfie, which would then be superimposed into a clip of Gary Lineker holding up the photo and saying "Nice selfie", before being shown in a crowd doing the wave. The Internet being what it is, you can probably guess how that went. Walkers (or rather, the automated script they'd created) were tweeting out clips with photos of Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris, Harold Shipman, and Fred West, among others. What's more, these were also being shown on Jumbotrons near the stadium in Cardiff IN REAL TIME. The promotion was shut down after only a few hours. Lineker, at least, was able to see the funny side of the whole thing, saying afterward that he'd "had an unusual day in some very strange company."
@@phlushphish793 Not just that, a poor woman died as a result, with the contest organizers being FULLY aware of the potentially fatal consequences of such a contest.
Apparently that’s not what happened, for numerous reasons; most notably, IIRC, they’re pronounced very differently (NOH-vuh for Nova vs noh VAH for “no va”), you wouldn’t use the verb “va” to describe a car driving like you would use “go” in English, and Spanish speakers would more likely think of nueva (new) first. Definitely were some jokes about it (“Mi Nova no va!” >w< xD), but not the huge deal you make it out to be.
No, Spanish speakers were not stupid. They use "nova" or "novo" as a preffix because it means "new". They've kept the original word and meaning from Latin, but use it less often than the Spanish adaptation, "nueva" or "nuevo", both adjectives. It's fun to say "Nova no va", though 🤭
About the New Coke "thing." We were doing business with Coke at the time. We were told by one of their Marketing people that the day after Coke decided that New wasn't going to make it that the whole floor at Coke HQ in Atlanta that worked on it was summarily FIRED, effeective immediately. He said he was on their floor two days later and there was nothing on that floor. It had been all removd. Now I must say that we had to believe him, but I wouldn't doubt it. Coke has a BIG head.
New Coke turned out to be a cover for the switch from the OLD "Original Coke," sweetened with Cane Sugar, and the "New Original Coke," sweetened with High Fructose Corn Crack. When "Original" Coke came back, I ran my ass to the nearest Base Exchange and bought a case. Opened one, and gave the rest away. From that day on, I was an avowed Covfefe drinker. Except when people show up with Mexican or Canadian Coke.
@@TimeSurfer206 That definitely sounds like a worthy theory. Frickin' corn syrup! I don't live in the USA, so our drinks here aren't made with that crap. I used to wonder what was so special about Mexican Coke. It's only likely special to y'all for this reason, right? Jarritos do a better Mexi Cola anyway. Dr. Pepper (my fave drink) is a US import so corn syrup is present. I've tried the UK Dr Pepper, without corn syrup, it has a taste I can only describe as slightly magical lol.
I find putting things like a name or a mascot to a vote only to backpedal at the last moment to be extremely dumb. Don't act like democracy is the answer to everything, it has its place and its appropriate time.
Here is an exteremely recent one that I am reminded of from the McDonalds story. Budweiser became the beer sponser for the 2022 FIFA World Cup which was hosted in Qatar and they spent a crap-ton of money getting the rights to sell beer at the stadium. They seemed to forget where they were holding the competition however. Qatar is a Muslim majority nation like most of the Middle East and in Islam even holding alcohol is illegal. Naturally they weren't allowed to serve beer at the 2022 World Cup.
Whatever the actual fuck is happening with Twitter and Elon Musk. Last thing I saw this morning was him complaining about Apple no longer advertising as much and asking if they hate free speech
Flour bag built Elon did an impulse buy, was made to follow through, and caused an apocalypse. Oh, and there's the mass firings. Honestly, with the way things are going, he might have to sell the site.
@@mehmeh9885 It popped up as a retweet for me on my feed and the guy has been constantly fucking up and sinking money to cover his fuck ups. I heard he sold several billions of Tesla stock and had to use government money from Space X for an advertiser pack. Which might cost him more down the line. Not including the growing list of lawsuits he might be facing.
I personally believe Musk's ego got the better of him, thinking 'I'm the world's richest man! I can buy anything!' I think he 'bought' Twitter mainly to reinstate Trump (which he did). He already had enough on his plate. Now with the firing/rehiring, thinking of selling it, he's over his head!
Here's one very recent: Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast and their 30th anniversary. For those who need context wizards of the cost (wotc) make a super popular card game called magic the gathering which has been in production since 1993. Back in the early years a number of cards didn't have a lot of them made so nowadays these cards can be worth 10s of thousands of dollars, so for the 30th anniversary Hasbro made wotc reprint these cards and pack them into randomized booster packs and sell them for $1000 for 4 of these packs. Now this doesn't sound that bad on paper, you can get cards worth lots of money for only $1000. Well, these packs are random so you won't know what you get until you buy them because it wasn't just the super rare cards that got reprinted, it was every card that came out in the set along with the super expensive cards. The likelihood of getting anything worth that $1000 you spent on is incredibly small. To make matters even more infuriating these cards are not tournament legal, so if you play in tournaments you are not allowed to use these cards! The only reason to get these cards is purely for display and bragging rights. Good luck trying to resell these things, no one is going to want them. Let's just say many magic players are furious. To prove that they can go deeper in the hole they dug, wotc started going around to people who play the Pokemon TCG and Yu-Gi-Oh card game and asked them to promote the anniversary cards. This has caused a lot of rage among mtg fans and now no one wants to touch these cards. Besides, with a price tag like that they already alienated 90% of their fans anyway.
@@jmjedi923 They said "the sale has concluded." In the past sales they've said "sold out." Makes me think they didn't sell as much as they wanted and ended the sale to make people think it was popular.
My favorite, that came and went in the blink of an eye, was the hash brown potato ad with the tag line: "made for (product name) by hash brownies of course" with a guy dressed up like a brownie. Then there's the Cincinnati helicopter turkey drop debacle made famous on the show "WKRP". This was totally for real. My hubby worked with the guy who promoted it. He even had a newspaper clipping with his name it it. He really did say -"I swear to God, I thought turkeys could fly."
The Mountain Dew contest winners was “Gushing Granny” because it was green apple flavored. Bronies tried to get it named Applejack, but trolls hijacked the contest and kiboshed any chance of that happening.
@@kurtpunchesthings2411 I'm pretty sure they changed the name to something like the HMS David Attenborough, but they did name one of the research drones (or whatever it was) Boaty Mcboatface
They made a documentary about it on Netflix..."Hey Pepsi - Where's My Jet". Turns out some kid came up with a scheme to get the points needed. Then he and a cohort started thinking - where would they keep it? - how would they get fuel -how could they qualify to fly it -if they ever got it up - where would they land it. - how much would insurance cost.
In May 2019 the US Army tweeted "How has serving impacted you?", obviously expected a bunch of "I am proud to serve my country, Go America, rah!" answers. Instead they were flooded with messages about PTSD, depression, suicides, families being torn apart after their loved ones came home in a box, sexual harassment/assault, and getting kick out for being gay.
That time Burger King officially tweeted "women belong in the kitchen" and believed twitter users were smart enough to scroll down and see the thread about promoting female chefs and donating to various organizations.
12:46 this could very well be why McDonald's ran the Monopoly game, to recoup those losses. IIRC, at least one year, it was discovered that someone affiliated with McDonald's hit Boardwalk & Park Place, which I believe was worth a million.
Actually not a gigantic one, but one of my favorites of the past few years was this antibullying campaign for video games called the Bully Hunters. It was made out to be this organization of girl gamers that would combat bullying and "toxic masculinity" in gaming by joining games where someone is being bullied and beating the bullies for them. The whole thing was basically bankrolled by Steelseries and they had a bunch of Bully Hunters Steelseries gear made for the event. It was a fucking disaster where they showed some faked gameplay clips of Counter Strike with the most hammy faked chatting. It was like one of those 90s afterschool PSAs. Everyone online was trashing it. Immediately after the event they shut everything down and Steelseries threw all the event organizers under the bus, saying they weren't aware this is what they were doing and that they'd potentially be seeking legal action. It was pretty clear that they were behind it the whole time and were looking to cash in on woke stuff, but it was forgotten immediately.
@@phlushphish793 IIRC, the "Don't say gay" thing was about using it as an insult, while I assume today's "It's ok to say gay" could be in response to that "Don't say gay" bill in America (which is quite different to the Hillary Duff PSA) (Although I'm not 100% sure why they're saying "It's ok to say gay", since I don't live in America )
Not a disaster, but I can't see it being value for the company: Around holidays and sports events, soft drink sellers drop their prices. When I find 12 packs of diet ginger ale, 5 packs for $11, I buy as many of them as I can, and it lasts me for a year (until the next promotion). Usually $5.69 a case, I pay $2.20.
The recent worst was Kentucky Fried Chicken's roll-out campaign in Germany of a new chicken-cheese dish perfect for celebrating Krystalnacht, Krystalnacht Is The NightofBtoken Glass--the begining of The Holocaust. This was 2022. They hurriedly recinded it and claimed a calendar bot did it. ""Hoover--OurProduct Sucks!" In the U.S.A. George Washington's Birthday used to be celebrated with incredible, unbelievable sales for which people would camp out for days. One car dealershipannounced their flagship automobile could be had for 15,000 bananas---American slang for dollars. The dealership was inundated with produce in pickup trucks. The court made them honor the ad. The Chvrolet Nova was hard to sell in Hispanic countries: No Va means "won't go."
Well, they did say, "Bananas." Courts were right. As a side note, advertising lobbyists pushed it through Congress to make the word 'best' only mean 'better' in advertising; so, now all products are 'The Best!'
Goddamn this is an old thread they're taking from if they're like "so yeah, Yikyak JUST died". I was in college during this time and it was sad to see it go. Apparently the reason was because death threats, rapey stuff, etc. couldn't be tied to someone in particular and punished before they made that change to require usernames, but by doing so they ruined the reason for their existence. It was a catch 22. It was fun while it lasted.
14:09 The Osborne Effect, if I'm correct. The Osborne 1 being the first successful PC, but the founder announced its successor before it was ready to come to market, which thus killed all demand for it, and the company went bankrupt as they had no money to bring the successor to market.
Here in the Philippines years ago Maxim magazine sold their latest issue bundled with a PC version copy of GTA 4. The thing is, the magazine only cost a quarter of price of the game.
To be fair to the school that chose a Black Bear over Admiral Ackbar, I'm pretty sure they would've had to pay royalties to Lucasfilm/Disney every game until they changed mascots, and that stuff is expensive.
I worked for a juice manufacturer in Florida that was based in Boston, back in the early 1980's. We legally used a strong solution of lye water to clean the blend tanks when we changed from one flavor to another because the citric acid in the juice would neutralize any remaining residue after the rinse. This practice was USDA approved. Through a long story of a comedy of errors, some juice containing lye water accidently made it to an elementary school in California. Most of the damage was panicky kids who tasted the juice and found it to be less than sweet. A few went to the hospital as a precaution. I got a lot of overtime, as a forklift operator, pulling 6,000 cases of juice out of the freezer to be sampled by our lab. Luckily, every 24 cup cardboard tray was run through a punch clock with a a code as to which line it was run on, (we had 3), a date and time stamp, before it went into the filler machine. One guy came over from the production department and tried to act like he was in the know so he declared that the wife of one of the warehouse workers was responsible for the goof before it was even determined. Our guy publicly threatened to kill him that night so they kept our guy for a hour of overtime to give the other guy time to get home. Management made the loudmouth apologize to the couple because the wife didn't even work on the line that ran that product. He was also put on warning and probation that if he ran his mouth again that wasn't the truth, he'd be fired. I left that job in 1999 for medical reasons. As of the time I left, loudmouth was still there but kept a very low profile.
Akklaim Studios Marketing Team pretty much tanked the studios. Bad enough the games was not good but their PR team really lived by the quote, "Any publicity is good publicity."
0:55 "Don't rely on Bri'ish weather as the lynchpin for anything." Walking through Downtown other day, some knucklehead tries to give me shite for carrying me Bumbershoot. I raised an eyebrow, and said, "I don't care how clear the sky is, this is Seattle. I'd sooner trust a fart, than the weather." He paused for a mo', mouth agape, and then said, "Good point."
Make an update, Nijisanji fires one of their biggest star after harassing her to an attempt of suicide, try to blame everything on her and uses her colleagues as meat Shields, it hard backfires they face backlash, it becomes Trend internationaly for days, they lose milions in stock marketing, sponsors pull out, its literaly a Corporation cancelation, everyone even outside of their niche is talking about, trying to save face, they releasse private documentation meant for only the legal team for other livers that made a video trying to further smear the talent, massive backlash, they lose thousands of subs, the talents basicaly tarnished their carrers inside niji or outside Nijisanji English is burning down and its a beautifull expectacle
An owner of a Krispy Kreme in England, where, to be fair to the poor franchise owner, there is no Klu Klux Klan. He decided to start the Krispy Kreme Klub for kids to collect points and get free donuts and drinks as such, and took way too long to understand the reaction to his colorful 'JOIN THE KKK' posters he had put up.
It would be a nice federal law that every person, company, school, etc. that holds a naming or mascot contest must accept the result and can only override it by having another fair vote for a replacement.
"New Coke was just a ploy to boost sales of Coke" is so moronic it just proves people can find a conspiracy in _anything_ and are incapable of questioning their own ideas for even a few seconds. The costs of developing and producing a new soda, marketing it, then getting it to every gas station and grocery store in the country are MASSIVE. The idea that Coke would purposely make a terrible soda (which it wasn't anyway. It consistently beat both Coke and Pepsi in taste tests), _replace_ their signature product with it, then sit on poor sales for months...not to mention plummeting stock values and pissed off customers...then bring back the original, all for a shot-in-the-dark that maybe sales will be a little better in the end is bafflingly stupid in every direction. As a plan, it is utter insanity right off the bat. Business Suicide 101. That aside, let's say for a second it was on purpose, and magically fell into place, somehow. Then HOW MUCH OF A F*ING BOOST WOULD THEY HAVE BEEN BANKING ON???? To offset everything they lost in this debacle they would've been counting on a massive spike in sales compared to their pre-New Coke numbers when the sane expectation would be...lower sales. Because some customers never return once you piss them off. This move nearly killed Coca-Cola and when they made the desperate move of bringing back the original Coke, they were lucky as hell that enough people even cared anymore. This may be the single biggest blunder in business, but at least the geniuses behind it can always say that even they're not stupid enough to believe this dumbass conspiracy.
Minecraft had a duel problem with trollish screens because some jackass made the following screens: "unable to connect to world" and "Wow this server is popular/Server full" and made fake download error messages a mandatory thing. Like seriously if there was a reason for an industry to be racist, the design industry better seize that opportunity and boot out all its idiot workers to eliminate bad designs as a threat
No one seems to remember a diet pill company from the 1980s, when I was a kid. Instead of being in pill form, it was in chocolate squares, which got my attention - because kid. Their name was Ayds Weight Loss [or something similar], pronounced "aids". Their slogan? "Wanna lose weight? Get Ayds." Yeah...
the time Pepsi had an ad where you could win a f16 or something it was a joke, but some kid sewed Pepsi and won , after that at last in Canada they had for that ad, you dont actually win the jet,
Pepsi actually tried to offer the lottery split ito settle the Philippine 349 scandal, 349 being the winning number on the bottle crown, but so many crowns were printed that each recipient would only get the equivalent of a few dollars. I wish I kept my parent's crown but my mom just threw it away. 😅😅😅
22:52 I remember actually seeing that happening in Assassins Creed Syndicate. I knew about the issue, but that game is the only time i recall experiencing it.
Haven’t watched the video yet so I don’t know if they address this but… “METH: WE’RE ON IT.” Omfg. I live in South Dakota and a couple of years ago they decided to address our huge heroin/meth/insert-awful-drug-here issues with an outsourced PR campaign. There were billboards, TV ads, everything, just plastered everywhere.
Regarding the cigarette thing mentioned at 17:45 Here in Denmark during the late 80s/early 90s tobacco products were heavily regulated (no more full page ads in magasines and newspapers, declare more clearly the harmful effects and such). The tobacco industry (lobbyists and a 'think tank') began counter-arguing, saying that the dangers of smoking were wildly exaggerated, how it could impact the Danish economy, how many people would lose their jobs and on and on.
Activision Blizzard ever since that Diablo Immortal reveal (2018). It has been one PR Disaster from another. And don't get me started on what happened in 2019.
These guys promoted an imaginary product as the next big thing in tech, but it doesn't do anything and can't be redeemed for anything and it turned out to be a scam.
Ah, yes. The closure of the Cleveland Hub. I fly out of there all the time. There’s a big terminal that’s been unused for years that was made for UA and since the hub closed, that entire section of the airport has been unused. A shame because it looked nice.
Well anybody like the first Sonic Movie Trailer? I didn't, but the shitstorm was of biblic Proportions, good they fixed it. Otherwise ( i think at least) there would have been some kind of bloodshed, knowing how violent some "Fans" can get.
Just... Activision-Blizzard. Everything they've done since like 2018. Overwatch 2 is a fun game, I really do enjoy the gameplay, but my fucking _god._ How anti-consumer can you get with that pathetic (and illegal in some countries) excuse for an in-game store? And the shitty battle pass which, while I don't necessarily hate the idea of a battle pass if there's good value in it, OW2's is certainly not great value. It's 10 bucks for a collection of 'themed' items across _ALL_ characters, which doesn't help you if you only like a handful of heroes, and even less so if they're not the popular characters that always get the good skins.
I remember The Simpsons making fun of the McDonald’s campaign back in Season 2. “We rigged the contest - they’re all in events communists never lose!” Futurama also made a brief jab at New Coke in “Fry and the Slurm Factory”, where the New Slurm was an intentional ploy to make billions on Slurm Classic once people hated it enough.
Tampax: their recent gross tweet abt being in a woman vs being in her dms. Just disgusting and r pey. Also they were considering having a MAN endorse their product. As of feminists don't have enough to complain abt.
Funny thing about Tampax: they were the first ones caught using 'shrinkage.' Way back, maybe in the 70's, they lowered the # of tampons in each box (from like 28 to 24 or something). The savvy women who bought/used the product returned it to the shelves. HUGE loss!
Another one from WWE: the Roman Reigns experiment between the years of later 2014 all the way up until midway 2019, for those unaware or not following there was a wrestler known as roman reigns who during his early years went through a group called the shield, fans loved him and them, they split up and fans loved them all in thier own way, then roman was hyper pushed as the face of the company, fans said no thank you but WWE continued, and continued and continued often sacrificing other talented full on events just to try and get him over as the big new john cena character for fans to love which often lead to the fans outright hating PPVs like the 2015 royal rumble, roman reigns himself and many, many, many years of television until he returned as a super over head of the table bad guy in mid 2019 and became the best thign in wrestling.
Pepsi cola, when Michael Jackson hair caught on fire 🔥 America on bank robbery locking them up, Brazil came up with a slogan “ escape to Brazil “ No extradition!!!!
1:21 what wrong with prongers? I quite like it but I have to considering its a family name though I do admit it can be annoying people thinking your named after a fork, a deer or a German breastplate.
2:42 It was Burnout 2. Until the acquisition by EA for Burnout 3 onwards, Acclaim owns the series and they have infamously bad, and poor-tasted advertisement campaigns for their games.
Oldsmobile in 1988 introducing newer sleeker looking car models to appeal to a younger demographic (the youngest boomers and older Gen-X'ers). Not a bad idea in theory but they went with this slogan: This is not your father's Oldsmobile.
previous to this watched a vid about Ai and the dangers that may happen ... me, well, if I can't tell the difference between a real person and robot, then what's wrong with the robot? why can it tell me it is a robot?
