Halloween is supposed to be scary. But for Target, the fright came from a children’s costume that made it through the company’s approval processes and onto store shelves. In August, Target faced criticism over its “Kids’ Glows Under Blacklight Circus Clown Halloween Costume,” which critics said...
Sometimes the scariest thing a business can do is hit “publish.” As Halloween rolls around, we’re dusting off some of the marketing blunders that are scary for all the wrong reasons … and the brand reputations they left haunted. In 2024, our article, Very Scary Marketing Decisions, explored some...
Sometimes, you have to take a gamble to get your name out there. Novig serves as an example of using controversial advertising to grab people’s attention, but there’s a fine line between controversy and crisis. The sports trading app recently released an advertisement featuring Sydney Sweeney that...
Did summer seem long? It did to crisis managers. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, at least 12 organizations faced significant reputational events. But these weren’t simply “PR crises.” Good Good Golf and Callaway lost a partnership, retail distribution, a television program, a PGA Tour...
Buc-ee’s is known for a lot of things: its enormous convenience stores, squeaky clean restrooms, and, of course, the beaver. It’s also known to be a company that protects its brand or a bully that makes smaller businesses change their logos depending on how you look at it. Well, you’ve probably...
Starbucks has done it again. Another preventable fumble, this time in their third largest market. Each one of the things that went wrong when Starbucks launched “Tank Day” to promote a new line of “tank” coffee tumblers was preventable. While the stores in South Korea are owned by the Shinsegae...
* We’re foregoing any puns this month with the serious topic. Nestlé and Danone are facing scrutiny following widespread recalls of infant formula products due to the presence of cereulide, a toxin that can cause vomiting and diarrhea and poses particular risks for infants. There have been 144...
A recent online flare-up involving Ruth’s Chris Steak House and Chili’s is a clear example of how quickly a routine decision can become strategic risk. And how fast things can go from a quiet dinner to a full-blown food fight. It started with a posted dress code. Ruth’s Chris sought to reinforce...
I used to work for a remarkable woman named Sharon Carstairs. She has been in Canadian politics since she was a child and her dad was premier of Nova Scotia. She followed his footsteps rising all the way to a cabinet member in the Chretien government. To this day, she is one of the smartest people...
A while back, premium exercise bike brand Peloton learned a hard lesson in how quickly perception can overtake intent. They ran a holiday TV ad featuring a husband gifting his (very thin) wife a Peloton bike. The spot follows her documenting a year of workouts and ends with her thanking him for...
Do you remember the Cracker Barrel outrage when they tried to evolve their brand? It was their first logo update in nearly 50 years. They rolled out a cleaner, text-only look and dropped the iconic “Old Timer.” There was a lot of customer outrage, right? That’s what it looked like at first. It...
When leaders go off-script, even the most comforting brands can suddenly feel cold. That’s exactly what happened a few weeks ago to Campbell’s Soup after a senior executive referred to its products as being “for poor people,” and also made a racially insensitive comment about employees. The...
Is your organization prepared to respond to a crisis and protect its hard-earned reputation? Take our quiz and find out!