Top 10 Marketing Blunders of 2008

Yeah, there’s a lot more than 10 here. What can I say? It was a very good year for very bad things.

(PS: If you liked this would you mind going here and voting for it on Digg?)

GRAND PRIZE FOR SUSTAINED ORGANIZATIONAL EFFORT

(tie)

The John McCain Presidential Campaign

• “Our economy, I think, is still — the fundamentals of our economy are strong.”
• Has no idea how many houses he (or his wife) owns.
• Picks Sara Palin, the Broad to Nowhere who couldn’t find Russia or Africa on a map.
• Campaign adviser and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina says Palin couldn’t run a major corporation.
• Campaign adviser and former senator Phil Gramm says Americans are whiners about economic problems.
• “Shutting down” his campaign to fix the bailout.
• “Lipstick on a pig”
• Egregious attack on Dungeons & Dragons that clearly cost him the election. (OK, maybe not so much the last one).

GM

• June: with gas heading to $4-a-gallon, company announces it is trying to sell the Hummer brand. As of today, sale is still pending.
• August: with gas at $4-a-gallon, company announces it will take the bold move of investing “$500 million to build a new fuel-efficient, small car the automaker says will show it can make money in head-to-head competition with its Japanese rivals as it fights to return to profitability.”
• October: Asks Treasury Dept. for $10 billion to pay for proposed merger with Chrysler
• Early November: car company that already isn’t selling cars argues it can’t file for bankruptcy because “people won’t buy cars from a bankrupt car company.”
• Late November: leads troika of Detroit CEOs to DC to ask for taxpayer money to balance the books. Each flies in on wings of attitude and three separate corporate jets.
• December: runs weasel-word mea culpa in Automotive News: “While we’re still the U.S. sales leader, we acknowledge we have disappointed you. At times we violated your trust by letting our quality fall below industry standards and our designs become lackluster. We have proliferated our brands and dealer network to the point where we lost adequate focus on our core U.S. market. We also biased our product mix toward pick-up trucks and SUVs. And, we made commitments to compensation plans that have proven to be unsustainable in today’s globally competitive industry.“

Runners Up

1. Ford features “Space Oddity” — a song about astronaut suicide — in new car campaign.
2. Framingham State College  uses the word blah 137 times in a 312-word fundraising letter.
3. Disney (multiple entries): Bans kids from DisneyWorld restaurant; Changes “It’s A Small World” to “A Salute to All Nations, But Mostly America”; and Sells “High School Musical” panties for tween girls with the phrase “Dive In” on them.
4. Woolworths (UK) launches Lolita brand of beds for young girl
5. JetBlue lives up to Southwest’s parody ad by charging for pillows.
6. Russia uses smiling kids in tourism ad for war zone
7. Residents of Lesbos sue those other lesbians over brand name
8. Motrin gets headache from viral moms video
9. Butcher’s ads feature “Meat Products, Fresh Service” on naked woman
10. Hershey asks if you’ve found Mr. Goodbar

Special Jury Awards

Co-Branding That Shouldn’t Have Been

• Windows Vista toilet paper
• The Muppets appear on DVD for Law & Order: SVU
  
• Barbie® Rice Krispies® Treats
• P&G starts hip-hop record label (Bounce® and Beyonce? Jay Z and Oral B®? 50 Cent and Febreze®? Snoop Dogg and Eukanuba®? Ghostface Killah and Ghost®? Lil Wayne & Pampers®?)

The Alpha & Omega of Over-reaching

• God’s chosen racing team loses at the Indy 500
• “Pope’s Cologne Provides Solace to Grieving Widow”
• “Can Batman Teach Spiritual Truth?”
• Email service lets you taunt friends after The Rapture
• McDonalds compares Ray Kroc to Martin Luther King Jr.

Product Failure

• LifeLock ID protection service fails to protect CEO’s identity
• Anti-shark device found to attract sharks

The Penguins Of Irony “Oh NO You Din’t” Awards

• Publisher says bankruptcy puts magazine chain in “a position poised for wonderful growth
• WaMu continues to send credit card offers after going out of business

Previous years’ lists

• Top 10 from 2007
• Dozen Dumbest Press Releases from 2006
• 10 Dumbest Business Quotes from 2006

Advertisement

Cylon toaster is best co-branding ever!

As us Battlestar Gallactica fans know the persecuted human minority refers to their robotic Cylon oppressors as toasters. So NBC/Universal did the smart thing and put out a Battlestar Gallactica branded toaster that imprints a picture of a Cylon ‘bot on the toast. $65 and it’s a limited run. Maybe the toaster is the 12th Cylon model?

NBC Store via OhGizmo

The strangest exercise in cross branding I’ve seen lately is these John Deere Fruit Flavored Snacks from Kellog’s. Other than harvesting what do tractors and fruit have in common and why would I want to put a brand of tractor in my mouth?

Odd brand placement: Spongebob Squarepants Rectal Thermometer

Best part: “Plays SpongeBob SquarePants Theme at the end of temperature taking.” Yeah, that’s gonna make the kid happier.

For reasons I won’t even pretend to understand the most consistently viewed page here at the Damage is: Headline of the day: SpongeBob Squarepants Digital Camera Is Neither Square-Shaped Nor Made Of Sponges. Its 2188 views make it the 4th most viewed page after my 2006 and 2007 annual lists of the Top marketing blunders and the gallery of grenade-shaped products that was linked to from DarkRoastedBlend. But that SpongeBob headline is like money in the bank. EVERY WEEK it is either the first or second most visited post. So I’m hoping that the Square one can do some more magic here.

Perfect co-branding: Windows Vista toilet paper

When I recently bought a new computer I got a Lenovo — causing me to be named Customer of The Year by the online CMO. I got the Lenovo in part because I love ThinkPads and in part because they made it very easy for me to get Windows XP. Below is a picture of a product that sums up the feelings of many of us. I suspect it may be a better TP than an OS.

Co-branding nightmare: Barbie Rice Krispies Treats

What part of the phrase “childhood obesity problem” don’t you understand? I guess the underlying message is “eat these and you won’t worry so much about the fact that you don’t look like Barbie.” Gotta say that the pink marshmallow goo looks evil to me.

War On Terror brand suffers major setback as UK ends partnership

File under: Declare victory and go home.

The words “war on terror” will no longer be used by the British government to describe attacks on the public, the country’s chief prosecutor said Dec. 27. Sir Ken Macdonald said terrorist fanatics were not soldiers fighting a war but simply members of an aimless “death cult.” The Director of Public Prosecutions said: ‘We resist the language of warfare, and I think the government has moved on this. It no longer uses this sort of language.” … His remarks signal a change in emphasis across Whitehall, where the “war on terror” language has officially been ditched. Officials were concerned it could act as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda, which is determined to manufacture a battle between Islam and the West.

NO WAR ON TERROR? But what brand will you use to scare the electorate with????

Co-brandings I didn’t see coming: Dunkin’ Donuts & MapQuest

It lets you plan road trips and find DDs across the country. Adfreak saw the best quote in the story:

“It’s really important for us to defend our leadership in iced coffee,” Scott Hudler, client director of marketing.

The reason I didn’t see this coming? I live in Boston where our Dunkin locator device is called looking left AND right. If there’s not one in immediate view then you are not in Boston.

Co-brandings I never would have thought of

• A Serbian line of fruit juice has bottles bearing the names and images of notorious leaders like Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro and Josip Tito. Also on the bottles: Che (of course) and Emir Kusturica, the Serb movie director bank rolling all this. What about Mao and Stalin?
• Baby Einstein sun block lotion. What’s the SPF on Mozart anyway?
• Business cards and beef. First there was bacon-flavored candy. Now, OhGizmo reports on a business card holder designed to look like a piece of prime Kobe beef. YUCCCH.
• Wait, folks that’s not all. How about an iceberg lettuce-shaped safe? GizmoDiva has found an actual safe designed to look like…well you know. It’s a great idea as I don’t think the burglar has been born who would say, “Hey, let’s dig through the vegetable bin for the valuables.” I also think it’s the best use for that flavorless, horrible foodstuff that anyone has yet come up with. I have been lobbying for years for a constitutional ban on the stuff. So far, no luck.
• Now all I need is a bread shaped item and we’ll have a sandwich.

Nestle buys Jenny Craig — now there’s a co-branding opportunity

VEVEY, Switzerland – In a new twist in corporate synergy, Nestle AG, the world's biggest food and drink company, said Monday it will fatten up its weight-loss business by buying Jenny Craig Inc. for $600 million.

Man, even the AP sees the humor in this one. Will we have Jenny Craig candy bars or Nestle diet bars? Or both?