The fame and recognition of a brand are solely based on the marketing and promotion of the product. When a marketing idea is presented in the conference room, it is either accepted or rejected. Furthermore, specific ideas taken at first come to bite the brand in the back later. These ideas may sound great at first but result in a big hit to the brand and its product.

In this article, we will talk about several of the marketing strategies that failed miserably.

What Is A Marketing Campaign?

Marketing campaigns are strategic activities that promote a business’s goal or objective. Furthermore, a marketing campaign will not promote a product, a service, or a brand. To realize the initial effective results, campaigns are carefully planned, and therefore the activities are assorted. Marketing campaigns make use of various channels, platforms, and mediums to maximize impact.

A business could run campaigns utilizing social media, online ads, email, in-person demos, etc. Each campaign will vary, counting on the intended idea. However, the messaging and tone of any campaign will closely link to the style of the business’s brand. The recent increase in marketing agencies means some companies sometimes outsource aspects of their marketing campaigns.

Why Do These Campaigns Fail?

The simplest answer is marketers tend to forget who they are advertising to.

Many blunders happen because of the fact that people of the market sometimes shift their focus off the success and specialize in being “creative” or “unique” instead of reaching their audience.

Furthermore, creating campaigns that are unique is a crucial part of the method, but an attempt to stand out should never accompany the compromise of alienating your buyers.

Some organizations don’t have realistic goals for their campaigns or only get the timing very wrong. Furthermore, a campaign can flop by sheer bad luck. But there are still certain precautions you’ll fancy to minimize the danger.

If your campaigns lack the aim of uplifting your brand and drawing in customers, then it’s just about to fail.

Biggest Marketing Failures

In an era of digital media, all eyes are stuck on a brand’s every step. That is an amazing time for product launches and brand awareness, but it can easily backfire on a corporation if they miss the mark. Here are some samples of marketing fails that made us wince:

1. Body Positive Packaging By Dove

Dove had a victory with the positive body image “Real Beauty” campaign featuring real women in a positive light. It had been an empowering campaign.

The campaign has been running for 15 years and is considered among the major successful marketing campaigns. The corporation is striving to assist reinforce a positive body image for ladies.

Then, Dove took the wrong turn. In England, they released packaging designed to show diverse representations of females. Their packaging compared women’s bodies to abstract, shapeless soap bottles.

The release set fire on social platforms like Twitter and Facebook. They released seven different shapes to settle on from, forcing women to settle on the bottle that matched their profile.

Instead of reinforcing a full-body image, it ended up increasing self-consciousness.

2. Print Misfire By Ford

In the year when the wrongdoings of Harvey Weinstein and #MeToo took over the news, Ford ran the worst ever visual for their advertising campaign. It showed three women who were bound, gagged, and stuffed within the trunk of the new hatchback.

The ad was removed, and Ford had to issue a public apology because many of us found the ad offensive and that it encouraged violence against women.

3. Kendall Jenner TV Spot By Pepsi

Pepsi wanted to equate its product as a culturally unifying force. OK, not a nasty goal for your campaign. 

“Hey, let’s get Kendall Jenner and have her settle a Black Lives Matter standoff between protestors and police by offering a policeman a can of Pepsi….”

The result? Chaos and Anger.

Social media ridiculed the spot and Pepsi quickly removed the ad. Advertising agencies used it to gut Pepsi’s in-house ad group by saying the fiasco would never have happened if only they’d used the workplace.

PepsiCo president Brad Jakeman stepped down six months later, telling Ad Age the spot was “the most gut-wrenching experience of my career.”

4. Sony: “Racist” Print Ad

 Sony ran an ad back in 2006. It was aimed at promoting Sony’s white Playstation Portable device.

Sony decided to market the new product in a questionable/offensive way. In the big ad, a pale woman with white hair grabs a Black woman by the face. The white woman looks upset and determined, while the black woman looks very submissive.

The text reads, “Playstation Portable. White is Coming.”

There are plenty of safe and fine ways to market the launch of your new product. Furthermore, Sony said, “The images utilized in the campaign intended solely to spotlight the contrast between the various colors available for the PSP.”

5. Boston Marathon Email By Adidas

Customers who took part in the Boston Marathon in 2017 saw a poorly worded email from the primary shoe and sports attire company.

The subject of the mail read, “Congrats, you survived the Boston Marathon!”

In the context of the other fitness event, this might sound harmless. Furthermore, many of us use this type of phrasing once we ask to complete an occasion. For instance, some might say they made it through their first CrossFit class.

But this message aired on the heels of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. This bombing killed three people and injured 250 people.