The kind of thing which makes you say “how could they possibly have thought this was a good idea?”
Australian supermarket promoting the freshness of their produce on ANZAC day, the national holiday in rememberance of fallen soldiers.
Woolworths takes down Anzac ‘Fresh in our Memories’ website after social media backlash
We have a new contender
Blizzard’s “Do you guys not have phones?” blunder during the Diablo Immortal reveal
that wasn’t really a campaign or ad, just a gaff made by an out of touch dipshit during the reveal. It was still tonedeaf, sure, but it was hardly Blizzards marketing intention.
An out of touch dipshit? It was the principal game designer from blizzard lol. Plus pretty certain the “dipshit” in question was also not a fan of the mobile only idea.
We’ve just had a campaign on our city’s public transport trams that said “I’m identifying as a trolleybus”.
During pride month, nonetheless.
tramsgender
Is this a slur against the autistic?
Don’t be so tramsphobic!
We had something similar, but it was just a play on the word transport and was just a normal bus and only for the pride parade we had, thankfully.
And
Nah, those are brilliant
I work in 911 dispatch, and there’s a couple crematoriums in the county I work for. Once in a while they call to give us a heads-up when they’re doing a cremation in case anyone calls about smoke.
We enter it as a “controlled burn” notification for our fire department, which I suppose it technically is, but it makes me chuckle a little that we’re entering the same way we would as if someone was burning yard waste or having a bonfire or something.
I don’t know how often they actually do cremations, I assume it’s pretty frequent, and I’m not always the one getting the call, but based on how often I’ve seen these calls go in I don’t think they do it for every cremation. I remember hearing somewhere through the grapevine that when the deceased is extremely obese they tend to really smoke up, so I kind of suspect those are the ones where they give us a heads-up.
Reminds me of an old billboard screw-up in Finland.
One billboard (I can’t remember what the ad was actually for) was quoting an old saying: “If sauna, tar and booze won’t help…” (“…the disease is going to kill you”)
Next to it was an ad for a private clinic. “We’ve got everything to keep you healthy”
Peak of advertising, I bet these pictures spread on internet like wild fire
The latest I can think of is Gwyneth Paltrow’s ad for a luxury condo project on stolen Palestinian land by Israel.
That’s a good one.
Just in general, I get the feeling that she’s not all there. You can probably sell her on anything.
Holy shit I already hated the woman but this is next level. Got any proof?
Didn’t think she could sink any lower and yet here we are
Just search for it on YouTube. Gwyneth Paltrow Israel ad.
shes been selling scams for quite a while, not surprising she is willing to do this.
Amazon spent millions on a single Ring ad during the Super Bowl that was so poorly received it killed a multi-million dollar business deal.
To be clear, all the companies involved are the worst of the worst, so fuck them, but all they had to do was nothing and it would have turned out better (for them, worse for the rest of us).
That Pepsi ad during BLM.
And The Boys remake of it a couple years later
In hindsight this has to be a far right psy op. It was a year after Trump was elected and they definitely wanted to see an end to both the BLM and MeToo movements.
I still think that the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) remarketing themselves after decades of abuse scandals, and they settle on the name “Scouting America” or… SA…
I get that they wanted to make scouting an all gender thing. That’s good… but they probably shoulda workshopped that name a bit more given the history and context of the organization.
The Secret Service is a thing and nobody bats an eye, sooo…
Right…
but the Secret Sevice was established in the mid 1800s… well before the abbreviation SS had other meanings.
The Scouts decided to rebrand a year ago… SA has been in use for over a decade now.
Hardly the same thing.
Not the same thing, true, but other organisations have been asked to rename and rebrand, no? I just sometimes wonder why that particular acronym is never questioned even in passing.
Probably because nobody calls it the SS
I’ve definitely seen that acronym used for the secret service
What else is it supposed to stand for? South Africa?
SA is also the abbreviation for sexual assault
Sturmabteilung, Hitler’s personal storm troopers that helped him rise to power
probably not naming the organazation having abbreviation of “SA” too.
That’s what they said…
The “hide the pain” facial expression really sells it.
I live in a neighborhood where every day I see more and more people who can’t make ends meet. Shops and services are closing every month and the storefronts stand empty.
The bank near me has signs up in their window “Celebrating 250 Years of the American Dream!”
Read the fucking room.
There was an ad from Coke entirely generated by AI last Christmas. It wasn’t even cute or on point, there was editing error, etc. People complained so much that they pulled out the ad
The only thing I remembered about that commercial, is the number of tires changed in each shot…
All coke’s still image ads are AI now. Clearly AI and creepy as fuck.
Here’s one off their site:
It just gives you the ick when you see it in public.
At the same time a french supermarket chain released a human made animation which was a big success
I remember General Electric got a lot of flak for a commercial of theirs, meant to “celebrate America’s hard workers” or whatever.
They used the song Sixteen Tons.
No way lmao
That’s a new level of tonedeaf
There are multiple actual mercedes-benz commercials featuring the song “Mercedes Benz” by Janis Joplin, which is not-at-all-subtly mocking consumerism and purchasing status symbols
Or an incredible troll from the inside lol
Oh yeah. That reminds me a while ago there was some car ad, a car is driving in some beautiful remote mountainous area and the music playing is Major Tom.
I’m still laughing. Gonna die far away and alone in that tin can.
Oof, yeah, ouch. Reminds me of the time Mazda used the Lorax to promote an SUV they were selling. Totally would’ve answered with that, had I not remembered the GE thing.
What inspired the post: a cigarette lighter that was handed out as part of an election campaign with the slogan “FOR OUR CHILDREN” on it. The lighter is too bulky for children’s hands /s
I JUST read an article about Starbuck’s bungled Gwangju promo in Korea. I’m betting that inspired this post, but if not, look it up, it’s a great example.
The timing of the post was a coincidence (the actual inspiration is in a separate comment), but this is indeed a great example of the title. I just read up on this incident, and oof…😬
The coffee chain triggered an uproar when it attempted to promote a series of stainless-steel tumblers it called “SS Tank” by declaring May 18 to be “Tank Day.” The date marks the anniversary of the 1980 pro-democracy uprising in the southern city of Gwangju. It was violently suppressed by Seoul’s military government at the time, which deployed troops, tanks and helicopters, leaving hundreds dead or injured.
The campaign further fueled outrage by using the slogan “Thwack it on the table!” which many read as a reference to a notorious 1987 police statement that attempted to cover up the torture death of student activist Park Jong-chol. Authorities had falsely said Park died after investigators “hit the desk with a thwack.”
🤦♀️
