TGIF! Well that was a week. Surely next week will be better. In the meantime we have a weekend full of footy, football, boxing, racing, and more!

Word Count Filler Time

Let’s point and laugh at some truly terrible ad campaigns from the past.

IBM
It’s April 2000 and IBM wants to promote its Linux operating system with a “Peace, Love and Linux” campaign. To do so, the company hired artists in Chicago, Boston, New York, and San Francisco to draw peace symbols, hearts, and the penguin logo of Linux on sidewalks with biodegradable chalk. Disaster struck in San Francisco when the local artists there used spray paint instead. After initially feigning ignorance, IBM eventually was forced to confess and paid a $100k fine.

Pan Am Airways
In the early 1980s Pan Am started a new New York to San Juan, PR route. As a promotion they offered a special meal on the flight of salami, cheese, apple, small bottle of Mateus wine, and a small tablecloth served in a basket. The logistics of this turned out very poorly. First, the salami, 2000lbs of it, showed up already sliced since that was the agreement with their food preparers. They had to scrap all of that and order another 2000lbs of unsliced salami. Then they found out the wine was delivered to New York while the baskets were sent to San Juan. Trying to fix that, they soon found out the while the wine was being sent to San Juan, the baskets were being sent to New York. Once sorted, they were all ready for their first flight. That’s when the flight attendants found out the wine bottles had cork tops instead of screw tops. Obviously, the plane didn’t have corkscrews on board. So all that wine was replaced with screw tops and everything was good, right? Well, Pan Am had the great idea to expand service by using larger 747s. And, lo and behold, the flight attendants didn’t have enough time to serve all 300 baskets to the passengers during a flight. Pam Am then abandoned the promotion entirely.

Toyota
In 1998 Toyota wanted to do some focused marketing to African Americans. Oh yeah, this goes exactly as you’re expecting. They ran an ad in Jet magazine for the Corolla with the tagline “Unlike your last boyfriend, it goes to work in the morning.” Then they ran an ad with a smiling black man with a gold outline of a RAV4 on his front tooth. There was a giant uproar and threats of boycotts. Toyota apologized, stopped the marketing, and committed to a 10 year, $7.8 billion corporate diversity program.

Kraft Foods
In 1989 Kraft started a promotion for Krafts Singles. They would place a left hand game piece in the package of cheese and insert a right hand game piece coupon in Sunday newspapers in Chicago and Houston. Prizes included bicycles, skateboards, cheese, and the grand prize of a 1990 Dodge Caravan. The odds of winning the Caravan were 1 in 15 million. But the printer made a small mistake and printed 10,000 winning game pieces for the bicycles, skateboards, and yes, the Caravan. Oops, all winners! Kraft canceled the promotion but, of course, got sued by all those that thought they won. Kraft eventually settled and gave $700 to everyone that won the van, and smaller amounts to everyone else for a total payout of $10 million.

Folks, if you’re going to do a promotion, be very diligent. Or out source it to a well run and respected marketing firm.

Click here to get to commenting

Sexy Time

Enjoy the weekend, folks! Alright, now let’s get to the comments!