What You Can Learn From Three of the Worst Marketing Disasters
It's hard to believe that something as simple as marketing could be so easy to mess up. After all, it's not like you're trying to cure the world’s biggest social issues or build a bridge—you're putting out curated content and hoping for the best. However, when things go wrong with your campaigns, it can be disastrous for your business. For example, let’s discuss learning opportunities from the three biggest marketing disasters of all time: RyanAir’s insensitive tweet, McDonald's coffee lawsuit and Domino's pizza PR disaster.
1. RyanAir Not Landing a Joke
Sports and following players is a huge passtime not just in the US, but around the world. So when Jordan Sancho, football player hopeful for the World Cup in 2022 didn’t get called up RyanAir tweeted, “We’ll still fly you somewhere 😘.”
This may seem like a nice gesture, but considering the fact that RyanAir intentionally uses their reputation as a slightly lower quality budget airline as fodder for their darkly humorous social media presence, it was in poor taste.
Any time a comment on social media uses someone’s misfortune or disappointment for attention, it’s a disaster. Classless, insensitive behavior makes a brand look tone deaf, and when reputation is everything no brand is big enough to be able to afford to lose any ground when it comes to being perceived as thoughtful and empathetic.
2. The McDonald's Coffee Lawsuit
The McDonald's coffee lawsuit was a product liability lawsuit in which Stella Liebeck successfully sued McDonald's after she suffered third-degree burns from hot coffee purchased at one of their restaurants. The incident took place on February 27, 1992 when Stella Liebeck purchased coffee at the drive-thru window of a local McDonald's restaurant located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After getting her order and driving away from the window with it, she placed her cup between her legs while removing gloves so she could add sugar and creamer to the beverage; however, due to its temperature being between 180 degrees Fahrenheit (82 Celsius) and 190 degrees Fahrenheit (88 Celsius), this caused third degree damage when it spilled onto her lap causing severe burns that required skin grafting surgeries over several years following this accident.
McDonald’s response to this was to continue paying the fines for keeping their coffee too hot instead of complying with guidelines and regulations for safe beverage temperature.
When a company knows a product can (and has!) injured people, and does not immediately take responsibility for, and correct the error, it comes across as caring more about their bottom line than their customer’s safety, which makes any business look careless and greedy.
3. Domino's Pizza's PR Disaster
The story of Domino's Pizza's PR disaster is a cautionary tale for all businesses, and one that you should learn from if you don't want to have your own PR nightmare. The pizza chain was on top of the world in 2009, with revenues topping $2 billion and profits growing at an average annual rate of 16%. But then came Twitter and Facebook--and a series of bad decisions that led to one of the biggest marketing fiascos in recent memory:
In 2009, two employees filmed themselves doing disgusting things with food before delivering it to customers. The videos were posted online where they went viral; by 2010 Domino's had lost over $100 million in market value as consumers boycotted the company's products due to their poor quality control standards.
Obviously it’s impossible to micromanage what every single person is doing in a company as large as Domino’s at any given moment, but a good PR agency would have advised that Dominos’ immediately release a quick “we’re looking into this” statement even if they didn’t have an apology and “this is how we’re going to fix it” plan ready.
Take immediate responsibility even if you can’t take immediate action to rectify the situation and you’ll avoid a lot more damage in the near future.
Marketing disasters can teach you what not to do.
Why are we discussing marketing disasters? Because we believe anyone can learn from the mistakes of others to ensure we don’t end up in the same position.
Sometimes a marketing disaster is just a simple misstep in execution or poor timing. Other times, it's an indication that something deeper needs to change about how your company operates.
One of the strategies we employ as a Press & PR agency is to research and take note of situations like this so that we can provide the best advice and support to our clients so they never end up in a list like the one in this article!
These three marketing disasters can teach you a lot about what not to do. They're also great examples of how things can go wrong even when companies think they have everything under control. If you want your company's next campaign to succeed, it's important to learn from these mistakes and avoid making them yourself.
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