3 of The Worst Advertising Fails
Over the years many brands have gotten themselves into some trouble, whether it was a funny mistake or a genuinely harmful one. With that aside, here are three of the worst advertising campaigns.
- Kendall Jenner Pepsi Commercial
With our first fail we have Pepsi with their commercial that was supposed to be a representation of unity and peace, when in reality it’s seen as something way different. On April 4, 2017 Pepsi released a controversial ad starring American model, Kendall Jenner. The commercial cuts from people dancing, to people protesting for peace, to Kendall posing in front of a camera when she’s called over by one of the protesters- so she takes off her wig, wipes off her makeup, then joins them.
She carries a can of Pepsi to one of the surrounding officers, returns to the protesting crowd as they all start cheering and smiling. The camera cuts to the Pepsi logo with the quote, “Live For Now”, and the commercial ends.
People are upset by this because instead of showing love and unity like the brand intended, it comes off like they are using the Black Lives Matter movement and police brutality to advertise and sell their product.
After all of the backlash Pepsi was getting, they came out with a response saying, “Pepsi was trying to project a global message of unity, peace and understanding. Clearly we missed the mark, and we apologize. We did not intend to make light of any serious issue. We are removing the content and halting any further rollout. We also apologize for putting Kendall Jenner in this position.”
Just two days after the ad aired, SNL parodied it and called out every point within the commercial where they went wrong.
Eight months after the scandal, Kendall Jenner finally issued her apology in the season fourteen premiere of the famous reality television show, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, saying that the last thing she would do is intentionally hurt somebody and that she “feels so stupid” for having taken place in a situation like this.
Later in the summer of that year, Kendall’s sister, Kim Kardashian, talked about the whole scandal on a talk show with Andy Cohen and said, “She totally understood at the end of the day and she felt really awful for it, she just wants to move on from it.”
- Burger King Hacked Campaign
Up for our next fail is Burger King and their attempt for great marketing which turned out to be not so great after all. In 2017, Burger King launched an ad promoting their new television advert, which ran on smart devices and a few android devices that would describe and promote their Whopper burger, but it turned out to be a huge fail in the end.
The advert was programmed to read off of a wikipedia page that described one of their most popular burgers, the Whopper, but soon after it was released somebody ended up hijacking the wikipedia page and changed it to describe the whopper as, “the worst hamburger product” and even went on to add cyanide to the ingredients list.
Over the years Google has chosen to keep silent about the whole situation and Burger King eventually fixed the campaign to not be activated by Google while still keeping up their promoting commercial.
- Kendall Jenner Tequila Ad
Finally, for our last fail we have Kendall Jenner yet again- but this time for her ad promoting her tequila brand. On May 18, 2021, Kendall released an ad to help promote her new tequila brand, “818 Tequila”, which she immediately got an immense amount of hate and backlash for.
The completely insensitive commercial shows Kendall walking through an agave field with a bottle of tequila while Mexican farmers are tending to the fields, it then cuts to her riding a horse, to her smiling while sitting on agave plants, and even her holding a shot wearing two braids, handcrafted earrings, a hat, and blouse with a pattern similar to a rebozo, a cultural piece worn by women in Mexico.
After promoting her product, she started to receive tons of backlash from many people of Mexican descent calling her out for culturally appropriating. Kendall eventually turned off her comments to stop the hate, but much of the backlash just moved to Twitter instead. People were also calling her out for putting many smaller tequila businesses out on the street due to the agave plant shortage.
As far as we know Kendall Jenner has still not put out an apology for profiting off of cultural appropriation to help further her brand.
https://softcube.com/really-bad-advertising-examples/
https://astute.co/pepsi-kendall-jenner-commercial/#:~:text=The%20following%20 day%2C%20 Pepsi
Co%20 finally,light%20of%20any%20serious%20issue.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39589013
https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/burger-king-just-became-first-brand-fail-google-home/1430559
https://www.instyle.com/celebrity/kendall-jenner-818-tequila-problematic-explained
