How to Avoid Marketing Flops, Bombs, and Other Major Disasters

There’s a fine line between marketing genius and stupidity. Kelly Kirkham investigates…
Marketing and advertising can take you on a roller coaster ride. When it’s good, it’s good. Who can forget the Guinness’ tick follows tock (follows tick follows tock) advert or Budweiser’s Whassup?
The problem is, when marketing goes wrong, it goes really wrong. There are entire websites dedicated to marketing fails, including epicmarketingfails.blogspot.
The most recent casualty of a crash-and-burn marketing campaign was OnePlus, a newbie smartphone maker. This month, they caused heads to shake, after they released their “50 most well-liked ladies” contest – a sort of online beauty contest to promote their new phones.
As part of the competition, the company encouraged women to draw the OnePlus logo somewhere on their bodies and snap a selfie for the chance to win a prize. It seems innocent enough, right? And it could have been, but it just so happens that women have a problem using their bodies to promote a product.
The contest’s original description went like this…
As we close in on the 200K mark for the number of registered forum users, OnePlus wants to give a shout out to the few but beautiful female fans in our community with our Ladies First Contest.
Ladies (and only ladies, sorry guys, ladies first), the rules are simple:
Draw the OnePlus logo on a piece of paper or on your hand/face/wherever (so we know it’s really you)
Take a photo of yourself with the OnePlus logo clearly visible
Post the photo in this thread
The 50 most well-liked ladies will receive an invite and a Never Settle t-shirt.
Additionally, we will be giving out another 100 invites at random to any lady who participates in the contest.
Ladies, no nudity please.
Just minutes after the competition was launched, men and women retaliated against the company by posting complaints across twitter and the company’s own site. A few women even took selfies with the OnePlus logo with their own middle fingers as flags.
The company shut the contest down the same day, retreated, and hid under the covers hoping for bluer skies.
Of course, OnePlus aren’t alone. This type of marketing bomb happens quite often.
Back in 2012, Carl’s Jr received a petition from disgruntled TV viewers demanding that they stop showing an advert in which Kate Upton got semi naked to eat a cheeseburger.

Even major companies have promotional flops. This Samsung commercial caused a few eyes to roll for showing a woman in a kitchen talking about children and chores.

Even Mercedes encountered a few middle fingers of their own after releasing this sad attempt at a blond joke that really just offended the human race as a whole.

All of the above illustrates what could happen to you if you aren’t careful with your marketing strategies.
Here are some steps you can take to insure that you don’t spend all of the fourth quarter hiding under your covers, waiting for the world to forget your marketing fail…
1.Do your research
Make sure you’ve thoroughly investigated all angles of your marketing. If you’re trying to reach an international audience see what your slogans and copy translate as in different countries.
Don’t do what Pepsi did when releasing a new slogan for the first time. China was stunned to read that Pepsi’s translation of “Pepsi brings you back to life” actually read “Pepsi brings your ancestors back to life”. In marketing you have to put on many different hats to be sure that your promotion is pleasing to all walks of life.
2.Test it out
Ask as many people as you can for feedback on your new marketing campaign. Ask everyone; Mom, Grandma, the lady at the coffee shop, the cab driver, honestly anyone and everyone. Sometimes offense can be taken by a certain demographic of people that you would never have considered normally. IKEA could have avoided a major blunder when they named one of their new desks “FARTFULL”.  Need we say more?
3.Use common sense
Be careful when using hot topics or controversial ideas in relation to your brand. In 2011, Kenneth Cole sent a tweet attempting to promote their new spring collection. It read “Millions are in uproar in Cairo. Rumour is they’ve heard our new spring collection is available”. It caused instant outrage.
4. Be original
Sometimes a company can toe the edge of appropriateness and get away with it, but when another company tries the same thing, it just doesn’t work out as well. Think of it as when your favorite great aunt tells jokes you’ve heard in the pub. It just isn’t the same right? By being original you can promote without carrying anyone else’s bad press along with you.