What Are Your Favorite Marketing 'Oops!' and Why?

Coors used the slogan, "Turn it loose," translated into Spanish where it was read as "Suffer from diarrhea."

My personal favorite; slumping sales of the Chevy Nova in Mexico were finally traced to the name Nova, which when translated into Spanish means "does not go."

No va = Not going.

Oops!

There are so many, here are my favorites.

1.) New Coke

2.) M&M's turns down being in the movie ET

3.) Hormel pushing the use of its trade mark of spam. I understand that the attorney sat on this so long that the word become entrenched and because of the inaction from Hormel, the ruling past they could do nothing about it.

btw, the Hormels' company attorney that was in charge of this, was 'canned' because of her inaction.

I suppose fraud doesn't count, but I do give it a consolation prize.

The advertising ENRON did late in their life and what I perceive as greedy investors that fell for it.

Same goes for WorldCOM. ^{The cynical part of me says 'you reap what you sow'.}

I sometimes wonder about car designers. Like, did Pontiac set out deliberately to design a eyesore when they designed the original Aztek? I assume the Marketing department had some input.

I also wonder about the marketing of a certain men's health product that shows the couple sitting in separate bathtubs out on the lawn. This image implies improved intimacy, how?

These aren't quite in the league of 'oops', but they are things that make me say why...?

Ah but, Aztek was designed for sale in Mexico, until import problems nixed that.

Aztek means "don't look" in Spanish.

if you are referring to the horrible design, because the word means "azteca", it comes from the word "aztlan" wich is the birt place of the Mexica Culture, and the city of Tenochtitlan

http://www.deperu.com/diccionario/significado.php?pal=azteca

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexica

I think the Pontiac Aztek was due to poor design. It was supposed to be a cross of a minivan and an SUV and people just didn't like them as a whole and are in fact a case topic in college texts for marketing failures.

Then came production, the executive said. The penny-pinchers demanded that costs be kept low by putting the concept car on an existing minivan platform. That destroyed the original proportions and produced the vehicle's bizarre, pushed-up back end. But the designers kept telling themselves it was good enough. "By the time it was done, it came out as this horrible, least-common-denominator vehicle where everyone said, 'How could you put that on the road?'" the official said.

Above from: Coding Horror: The Pontiac Aztek and the Perils of Design by ...

<Note: The concept car wasn't much better>

Car manufacturers,

Thats another one, when Edsel had a huge marketing blitz on the new and innovated cutting edge of the Edsel, it was like a whole new generation of cars,

After it was release, people were disappointed becasue they found out there really wasn't much innovated about it. Same stuff different pile.

Now if were talking about innovation in car industry, the 'Tucker' was way ahead of its time.

And we can't forget without mentioning VW "The Thing". I think marketing wasn't the problem, I believe it was a safety issue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw2fZOyjcAg

At one time, I worked for a company that made betting terminals for horse racing. Our management desperately wanted to get into casino gaming, so they had us put together what we called a video gaming machine. We put a top end processor in it, powerful graphics processor, etc. It would even take video feed (the current race) and do picture-in-picture so that patrons could lose money playing video poker while losing money on the horse race! What more could a casino ask for?

Our lack of marketing expertise shone through when they allowed the engineers to choose the color scheme for the thing: Blue. A nice sleepy blue. No chrome, no blinking lights, no grab your attention color scheme. Blue.

We sold exactly 100 of them.

Two that come to mind: The commercial where a child placed a sandwich in a VHS tape machine. The other was with Tandy where they showed their indoor use only remote control toys, outside in water, mud and dirt. Both of these caused untold problems for service techs.

I remember "Don't blame Desenex" and "Please don't squeeze the Charmin'"; I switched to other products.

but the "Please don't squeeze the Charmin'"; gave us kids something to do in the store while our mothers shopped......... if she didn't catch us squeezing that is.

^{Now if your caught squeezing, your probably doing some type of illicit/illegal drug use.}

WANG computers came up with the slogan "Wang cares".

Perhaps anticipating the boom in internet porn sites.

What about the Mitsubishi Pajero SUV released in Australia?

Apparently it means "tosser" in Spanish.

Maybe they could team-up with Wang, and boost sales.

"Pajero" was changed to "Montero" in [at least some] spanish-speaking countries in South America.

Fiat Pinto did not sell in Latin-American zones - apparently something to do with size.

Rolls-Royce Silver Mist did not sell in Germany (Mist translates as manure).

They avoided using "Ford Pinto" in Brazil because pinto means penis in some states. But Ford Focus was used even though it sounds like "out of focus" in Portuguese.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Passenger_Train

Abbreviate it: "APT".

Say the letters to someone who is French: "Ah, pe, te".

That individual translates the sound into "Has fallen (over)". Which is exactly what the project did, really.

Except that the Hornby model worked beautifully!!

My favorite marketing OOPS was that HTC google mobile is an authorized partner of Google.

Not exactly 'marketing', but there have been a few shops I've seen that advertize "50% off or less !". Huh ?

A restaurant I once lived near had a billboard proclaiming, "Steak and Chips. With peas !". Why on earth they wanted to emphasise the peas is beyond me.

I'm a sucker for exclamation marks (!).

For funny, I like the camping shop in Leicester that used "Now is the Winter of our discount tent".

They may look pretty, but I do not want a Smeg refergirator.

I could spend all day looking on the net, the things abound.

It's all in the accint.

A local veterinarian offered a real deal last summer. The banner out front read: Dog & Cat Neutering - 50% Off!

So how much did he charge to finish the job? I so wanted to call and enquire...

Steak and Chips. With Peas! ? Well, peas is important. Like, there are bumper stickers here which read Visualize Whirled Peas. (I'm visualizin' but all I come up with is Sax & Violins. :)

Smeg refrigerators? Bwahahahaha!

Aw, sheet. Speaking of which, how would you respond when U Sheet Pile answered the phone?

"U Sheet Pile, may I help you?"

"What did you say?"

"I say, 'U Sheet Pile, may I help you?'"

"You callin' me a sheet pile, Bubba?"

"No no no! We are U Sheet Pile!"

"Oh, okay. Yeah, I was wonderin' where it all went..."

Strange but true.....

Many years ago, the company that had produced "Vicks Vapour Rub" since around 1905, thought it would be a good idea to sell it in Germany.

Sadly sales were super sluggish.

Upon investigation, it was noticed that in German, the name Vick, because in German a "V" has an "F" sound/usage, translates to the German word "Fick", which is the same as the well known English swear word of a similar spelling, but with a "u" instead of the "i"!!!

German Mothers were not inclined to rub their children's chests with something so named.

A swift re-branding to "WICK" saved the situation as it now sounds the same in German as the English version does!!!! and does not imply something else either!

In a slightly similar situation, my German Boss many years ago named one of the top European managers "the Vicar". I said to him that might be misunderstood as it sound like "the F*cker" in German, though the manager being an ignorant Brit had not caught on......He said to me quietly, that is exactly what he wanted it to sound like as he could insult the Guy under the hand and he would never know...

The Brit Guy was definitely the son of two unmarried people....... Dangerous and cold hearted......

I laughed.....

I worked for many years with several large US computer companies.

Marketing Europe was well known for producing T-Shirts with badly spelt English for example.

"No more question" was one I remember......but there were many others.....The marketing managers were often Europeans with English as a second or even third language, but as they had many people from the UK or US working for them, it should have been easy to check up on.....

Almost as bad as the CR4 spell checker that knows so few words, especially true English words......there is a wrongly spelled word in this post according to the CR4 spell checker, who can get it first?

For a funny one, seen on the side of the van carrying Patel and Patel, plumbers: "Forget the cowboys. Try the Indians!"

I worked with this fellow from India whose humor at times often came off a little askew?

There was this long corridor in the plant that ran the length of the building. Irvin (his adopted name because nobody could remember the real one) entered the corridor at the far end just as I entered it. As he approached he pretended to be drawing six-shooters as in a mock gunfight.

"Ah! So, Irvin, you are wanting to play cowboys and Punjabis?"

New Coke did not go over well. I prefer Coke over Pepsi but I prefer Pepsi over New Coke. No amount of marketing could change that.

They had an advertisement for recycling aluminum and the challenge was made for winning an F-14. Somebody completed all the requirements to win the F-14 but guess what, no one was expected to win and the F-14 offer was something that could not be legally honored.

I'm just saying an F-14, it was a fighter plane.

F-14, as I recall it was a Marine Vertical Takeoff Harrier.

And the one that turned it in was a ...."wait for it"... attorney. Negations where going on the last I heard of it.

"F-14, as I recall it was a Marine Vertical Takeoff Harrier."

I don't get this, if it was a joke. The F-14 Tomcat was the US Navy's frontline Air Superiority Fighter, and for quite some time the only Aircraft in the US inventory capable of carrying and launching the AIM-54 Phoenix "fire and forget, all weather, all aspect, long range missile". Definitely an advanced and capable ship-board defense and attack aircraft.

The AV-8 was the Marine Corps "Harrier" JumpJet. The AV-8A was the version we built from the Hawker-Siddley used by Great Britain. The AV-8B was our upgrade, with exactly twice the payload, but with it's capabilities further extended by the introduction (again by the British, I believe) of the "ski-jump" ramp used to shorten taken off runs, and increase take-off payloads, since the vertical takeoff regime severely limited takeoff payloads.

No Joke, only a misunderstanding.

I mean't F-14 as a question. Then "as I recall, it was a Marine Vertical Takeoff Harrier." instead. I believe what Mountian Dew offered if you purchased so many cases and turned them in for the Harrier.

Get-it?

thanks for the extra info on the Harrier.

Got it. Given the quality of the brains here, and yours in particular (I've been around CR4 awhile, and have some favorites. You are one.) I thought I probably was missing something, and was pretty sure YOU knew the difference between the Tomcat and the Harrier.

Thanks for reassuring me.

I hope you mean 'particular' if thats that case....... thanks, but I don't deserve it.

but if you mean peculiar, well....

I don't remember what aircraft it was, all they showed in the commercial as I remember was a fighter jet with a pilot in the cockpit.

Either way. I don't care if it was an A-7E or an E-2 or F-4 or P-3 or A-6, they were all active aircraft at the time as well. Coke couldn't award one as a prize.

It was a while ago, so I am depending on my memory..

But I recall it was landing in the background.

just a sec, I need to end this....... hell, here it is. interesting read.

Yet another reason why we should kill all the attorneys, as Shakespeare suggested long ago.

I think he was a co-op student, and was working at a law firm. That's where he got the financial backing of investors. again, I'm depending on my memory. ;/

But on another related quip in the legal industry.

Word has it, the market is so saturated with attorneys, it's difficult for them to get a job.

Which explains allot that lead up to this with the analogy of, "It looks like rain tomorrow, who responsible? so I can sue" attitude

I was taking action against my xwife over custody a couple months ago and changed my mind and asked for my retainer back.

I left a message on the attorneys machine. Cost me $60 just for her to listen to that message.

Your not alone on this.

It cost me $60.00 also, for asking them to fax a bill I didn't receive from them.

I guess I was asking for it.

^{just a second, i have to go to the bathroom...........I'm back now, that'll be an extra $25.00 service charge please.}

Guy goes to his attorney, who charges $300.00/hour.

Guy, "Can I ask you two questions?"

Attorney, "Sure, what's the second one?"

,

people will read these line of threads and a good question is:

Which is true and which is a joke?

Answer: doesn't matter, true or not, There all jokes

They are a joke. Especially when Joke and Crook are synonymous when it comes to attorneys.

Attorney row in Green Bay, Wisconsin is located on Crooks Street....... How convenient!

And this street was named after..........wait for it............... "A Judge". Coincident?, I think not!

I noticed that they try to move from Crooks Street.

How's that for marketing?

That is good.

The story is told about a man who went to Thailand to visit, and while there, visited the waterfront markets. In one of the dusty, small stores, he found a Bronze rat, to which he took a fancy. The proprietor tried to sell him the "story" with the rat, but he only wanted, and only took, the rat.

As he left the store, not quite lost, but nonetheless, a little iffy about his path back to his starting point, he heard a scuttling sound behind him. He turned to look and saw a single gray rat following him. Continuing on his way, he heard the scuttling grow, and every time he looked back, he saw MORE rats. Soon he saw thousands, panicked, and started running. Finally, totally lost, he came to the canal on which some of the market fronted. On impulse, he reared back and heaved the Bronze rat as far as he was able. He was astounded to see the following sea of gray rats split around him, and chase the Bronze rat into the Khlong, were they drowned.

It took him weeks to find the store again, but, instead of the story, he told the proprietor he was back to buy ----

A BRONZE LAWYER!!

"What is it when you find 50 attorneys, chained together, drowned on the ocean floor?"

"A damned good start!"

Haha, exactly.

Why cry when a bus load of lawyers drives off a cliff?

Two spare seats!

LOL!!!

St Peter stands at the Pearly Gates to heaven.

"All child molesters, murderers, all mass killers and lawyers go straight down to hell, all the rest come into heaven."

Thank you for posting that.

Yep. That's a Harrier. The sloped-shoulder air intakes give it away, if all else fails. That makes it an AV-8(X) (I'm not good enough to pick the block letter from what I can see.)

Thanks for settling it.

I have often thought I should start a website about bad commercials. Too much time involved in that now days.
My current pet peeve is the people designing commercials putting telephone ring sounds in the background. Why would you want some of your audience distracted during your commercial?

My next peeve it commercials that tell you nothing about the product. Seems to me if you wanted people to buy your product, you should tell them about it.

telephone ring sounds in the background.

I hate things like that, as well as sirens or car horns on a commercial on the radio.

They get your attention, but, one of these times carma is going to put things in motion and your going to be distracted enough from looking around to smack into something.

You mean like two guys walking out of an ice cream parlor and one of the guys getting knocked over by some charging goat out of nowhere. And the commercial is about insurance.

Charmin bathroom tissue adverts take the cake. The ones featuring bears who come just short of showing the viewer how the product is used and what it's for?

We need these 'Almost Demos'?

Their adverts are in such bad taste that they practically invite the customer buy the competition's product. Of course, using theirs for its intended purpose could also be seen as making a statement.

This was fictional, but by far my favorite marketing oops ever. I had tears streaming down my face.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf3mgmEdfwg&feature=related

I'd take Bailey over Jennifer any day. Poor Les Nessman.

Yeah. Bailey and Jennifer kind of took over where Mary Ann and Ginger left off. I trend more toward Mary Ann and Bailey, but if trapped on an island, I guess I would be okay with Ginger or Jennifer.

Back in the 70's the movie series Martian Chronicles came out. There was a chapter where everyone left Mars and this guy found himself all alone until one day he comes across a ringing phone and it is a woman's voice. So he finds her and he starts courting her and she turns out to never shut up, she was so annoying, you get the impression of "I see why they left her behind" and the guy leaves her with the decision that he'd much rather be alone than to be with her.

[flame]

What really gets me are all the TV adverts which portray the father as a bumbling fool, a moron, a childish idiot not deserving of respect.

One Honey Nut Cheerios advert features a bloke who must furtively eat his bowl of cereal outside where the disapproving wife can't see him.

Invariably she comes out, places hands on hips and smiles patronizingly at what she obviously considers his childish behavior. He, meanwhile, behaves as one who has just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. (You just wanna smack these actors for opting for such roles)

It's the same basic theme in them all and there are so many of these TV adverts, and for all kinds of products, too, that you have to wonder if their producers are not all in league in pushing this one single message: "All men/fathers are stupid little children and not deserving of one ounce of respect. Just look at these pathetic blokes. Kids? Mums? See what we mean?"

[/flame]

It's designed to target a certain market. Like the ad you're referring too is giving recognition to women as being the main player in the household, primarily because women are the primary grocery shoppers, so they want to make the women feel they have their hands full with what they have to deal with on a daily basis and also to make it humorous.

I can see how europium would be frustrated with how marketing ploys sometime cross the line with exaggerations in order to "hit" their target demographic. Currently, I'm suffering through two particular active advertisements that frequently appear (either online or through some sort of physical media).

1. Verizon graphs. The Verizon bar is SO BIG! It's the best! No other background information given, just, look at how big this bar is relative to these arbitrarily small bars! Makes me "[flame]" every time

2. Mountain Dew aiming at "gamers". Do you play games?! DRINK MOUNTAIN DEW! Don't forget to get your snack on with limited edition Doritos!!! It pretty much breaks down everyone that likes to pick up a controller into a pre-teen mess of anger and short attention spans I'd list this one as #1, but I'd probably be really sad to see just how much these commercials actually work...

I just love the weekly notices of the "new' and "improved" laundry soaps.

Gets your clothes up to 50% whiter! Or gets up to 90% more dirt out of your skivvies.

They must think that only idiots do laundry. _{(no offense to people with mental handicaps)}

I don't know about the Verison thing. I have a Verison Jetpack for my internet. I was AT&T hotspot. AT&T wasn't very strong where I live and thet 5gig if data doesn't last very long. The 10G doesn't last long either but it's $2 cheaper. I signed up at Best Buy and they showed signal strength for the different areas and Verizon has a stronger signal where I live and having been able to compare, I've had a much more consistent signal from Verison. Sprint was the same strength as AT&T in my area. AREA being the operative word because in some areas the other providers are stronger.

I'll actually agree that Verizon has the overall better service (at least around here) in terms of consistent bars and speed. It's the commercial that just rubs me the wrong way. There's no labels, or any kind of key. It's just: here's 4 bars. One is massive! Which one is bigger?

I guess I just think it's a little condescending for them to think that we're too dumb to process real numbers or figures.

I agree.

You are not the typical viewer. Remember the majority of people don't think, they just react and what it pretty much boils down too is what ad people liked the best.

If Sprint was still offering the unlimited data plan, I would have gone with Sprint, even though it had the weaker signal strength.

The whole company rubs me the wrong way. I dumped 'em.

It is not limited just to advertising and it stopped being humorous about twenty years ago, but they're still at it, and in more than one form.

Consider the Disney movie, The Little Mermaid. I took my daughter to see this movie when it hit the theatres.

Harmless kiddie movie, right? Right? Look carefully at how the the protagonist Ariel's father Triton is portrayed: Triton is given to anger, is highly abusive (yes!), destructive - especially where it concerns his family - and yet he is somehow helpless and impotent when it comes to protecting his daughter from external threats. You see this under-theme again and again. In kids' movies, especially.

In such films - and there are many - where the father is in some position of authority, he is invariably shown as abusing that authority. Where he might otherwise have the capacity to protect his family from harm, he cannot - or will not - most often because of some moral or character flaw. His decisions are invariably bad - if he is capable of making any at all. Not just this one movie, but in many, many films. If there is a father character, you can bet he is portrayed as a violent and/or impotent and/or stupid moron.

How is this funny? And what product does it sell? These aren't adverts. Studios have been kicking this dead horse for at least two decades now. When does it stop being funny and become a consistent message which is hammered into kids heads over and over and over .... ?

Amen. Amen. AMEN! And GO. (GREAT OBSERVATION, that needed making.)

Disney at the time when that cartoon came out did some other things. Like, making one of the towers of the castle on the VHS box cover a penis. It was caught and changed later but I purchased the movie for my daughter before that change was made, I saw it.

In Aladdin, I had heard that there is a part where the words are whispered "All good boys and girls take your clothes off and get naked." So I listened to the movie were those words are supposed be spoken and sure enough you can hear it. It is when Aladdin is climbing up on the balcony of the princess and the tiger jumps on him. I ran it through several times and sure enough it is there. There was another Disney cartoon that came out at the time that had a penis as one of the castle towers besides Little Mermaid.

This is the original, smack dead center:

Here's another good one:

Advertising had always subliminal messages, some more discreet than others. And as far as that coke spot, I think it was just a bad joke that was created by putting in long hours from the graphic designers........ I hope so anyways.

But is there a line between marketing and advertising?

I always thought advertising was selling, marketing was persuading.

What I want to know is who found it first?

Marketing Penis-Discovery Envy?

Word !

So those at the 'head' of society have evolved as far as they are going to? They still make a tit of themselves!

It doesn't matter much, but why do they post 'Anon' ?

Are you suggesting I'm at the 'head' of society?

The thought never entered my mind.

Just wondered - my head seems to be growing out past my hair!!

If this is a recurring problem, have you considered getting one of those wax jobs? XD -AP2

I think it may be a little late for that.

One of my favourites involves the Yellow Pages (I think this is universally understood as the Telephone Business Directories)

True Story - happened here in the Hunter Valley in Aust around 1985-1990. Can't remember exact year.

A local guy, Richard Walker had a Cleaning Business. it was called "Dick Walkers Cleaning Service".

Well some niaive Yellow Pages employee entered it into that years directory with the Surname first, followed by the First Name, then "Cleaning Service"

His company made the news that year!!!

That reminds of another actual radio ad that ran.

The name of the company was Dicken's Cider.

At the end of the ad, they said, "There's nothing better than a hot Dicken's Cider".

I'd be willing to bet they knew what they were doing.

Gerber (a large manufacturer of baby food in the US) uses a cute picture of a baby on their products. They decided that they needed to expand their marketing and Africa looked like a good place to start. There was no such thing on store shelves there.

The whole thing turned out to be a horrible failure until someone explained to them that 50% of their potential customers could not read, thus they bought products by the pictures on the label.

Bill