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PR disasters are like watching a train wreck with popcorn. Sometimes you try to fix things, but nope - you just make it worse. People on Reddit spilled the tea on the most legendary PR oops moments ever. Buckle up, here come the cringe-fests!
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Need we say more? Somewhere between the headlines and Twitter storms, this one still cracks us up for all the wrong reasons.
So, Twitter was using #WhyIStayed to share tough stories about domestic abuse, right? Then DiGiorno tweets back, #WhyIStayed: He had pizza. Yikes. Talk about totally missing the vibe.
Pepsi tried a contest in the Philippines where the winner got a million bucks if they had a certain bottle cap number. Problem? 800,000 caps had the winning number. Chaos, riots, and even deaths followed. Not your average marketing headache.
GM made a Super Bowl ad featuring a robot so sad it tried to jump off a bridge. Cute idea? Nope. It came right after GM laid off thousands, so it looked super insensitive. Roll credits on bad timing.
The slogan was "The perfect beer for removing ‘No’ from your vocabulary for the night." Sounds fun until you realize how that sounds on social media. Hint: it didn’t land well.
The Penguins let James Neal do a Twitter Q&A, and fans came armed with savage questions about his dirty hits. It quickly turned into a hilarious brutal roast. Talk about biting the hand that feeds!
Barbra Streisand tried to quietly bury a photo, and well, the internet did the exact opposite. It's now the 'Streisand Effect' - trying to hide something and accidentally making it famous. Classic.
In 1993, a Canadian party made an ad mocking an opponent’s medical condition with a 'Do you want THIS guy?' tag. The opponent won, the party tanked, and political historians still cringe.
To prove leaded gasoline was safe, the guy who made it literally poured the stuff on his hands and sniffed it at a press gig. Spoiler alert: he got lead poisoning. Guess PR doesn’t fix everything!
Right after BP spilled tons of oil, their CEO goes, “I’d like my life back.” Like, dude, people lost their homes and livelihoods. Months later, he was out. Sometimes you gotta pick your words better.
McDonald’s did a promo giving free burgers if the US won certain Olympic events. They sneaky-picked events normally won by Soviets, knowing the US boycotted that year. Simpsons knew what’s up.
Also, Hoover gave away plane tickets with vacuums. People bought vacuums just for the tickets. They lost money but hey, clever!
OJ Simpson published a book titled something like how he 'would have' killed his wife. Yeah. Not the best PR move if you wanna be popular.
Jägermeister wanted a music-video-style mist on their pool, so they poured liquid nitrogen in. Combine that with chlorine? Toxic knockout gas! People started passing out, eight hospitalized - yikes!
NYPD tried to get people to tweet good cop stories with #MyNYPD. Instead, people posted police brutality pics. It tanked fast. Today, we call that a PR disaster 101.
The LifeLock CEO gave out his social security number and dared hackers to steal his identity. They did 13 times. The FTC wasn’t impressed and slapped the company with a $12 million fine. Oops.
In the ’90s, Long Island told everyone to come for amazing beaches and family fun… while simultaneously wrecking the main roads with construction. Visitors? Stuck in traffic hell and never looking back.
AIG just got a massive bailout and decided to throw a $500,000 retreat at a fancy resort. Because nothing says fiscal responsibility like blowing your rescue cash on a party!
When miners went on strike against the Rockefellers, they called in the National Guard to shoot them. To fix the fallout, the Rockefellers created the first ever PR department - and the Rockefeller Foundation to pull the ‘nice guys’ act.
This tobacco titan claimed smoking deaths saved money on pensions, housing, and healthcare ‘because people died early.’ Spoiler: The public did NOT like that.
Remember that ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner on the aircraft carrier? Yeah, the mission was way, way NOT accomplished. PR fail forever etched in history!
Many think McCain picked Sarah Palin just for PR reasons… and it backfired hilariously enough to become a textbook example of ‘be careful what you wish for.’
Ratner was CEO of a jewelry company until he called his products ‘total bull’ in a speech. Thanks to that verbal oops, he wiped half a billion pounds off the company's value. Yikes.
Jian Ghomeshi tried to gain sympathy by saying he liked rough sex, but then got outed as a serial a**h*l. The internet did NOT forget this one.
The communications director tweeted, “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” Then caught the full hate storm. Twitter is brutal.
In 2002, they released Asian stereotype t-shirts and racy thong underwear for 10-14-year-old girls. Their excuse? “We thought Asians would love it” and “it’s lighthearted and cute.” No thanks, Abercrombie.
This candidate said bad weather is like rape - you can’t control it, so you might as well enjoy it. And yep, that pretty much lost him the election. Talk about putting your foot in it.
In the ’90s, CK made ads that looked suspiciously like kids getting lured into a basement screentest. Immediate pull and graaaand apology. Yep, that’s one giant nope!
A study from Phillip Morris said early smoker deaths saved millions on healthcare and pensions. The public response? Confused, angry, and yep - a PR firestorm.
Disney opened Euro Disney as a carbon copy of their US parks. But Europeans aren’t into standing in line all day or skipping wine with dinner. Plus, no booze allowed. They learned *a lot* the hard way.
After being called out for racist comments, Paula brought a black friend on TV who said, "I'm as black as that board." Yeah, that didn’t help. Howard Stern had some choice words about it, too.
Jared was Subway’s poster boy until, well, things came out that dramatically changed the vibe. And no, it wasn’t a PR win.
Tom Cruise’s pricey PR people got the boot when he started dating Katie Holmes. Next thing you know, we get the famous couch-jumping Oprah moments. The PR drama wrote itself.
Rolling Stone put the Boston bomber on the cover and called him 'hot.' The internet’s reaction? Instant regret and a firestorm of backlash.
Geraldo hyped up a cave full of treasure on live TV… and there was nothing. Plus, an M&M guy famously refused Spielberg’s product placement request, leading to Reese’s Pieces selling like hotcakes instead.
Amy’s Baking Company went totally nuclear on Facebook after a bad episode. The internet watched in horror and fascination as they roasted critics non-stop.
Swedish company Locum sent a Christmas card in 2001 that was so bizarre and inappropriate, even Swedes can’t figure out how it slipped past. Sometimes even the pros fail.
Apple decided to ‘gift’ everyone U2’s album by auto-downloading it on devices. Fans? Unimpressed and super annoyed.
AT&T pissed off pretty much everyone by proposing to sell your private info to advertisers. Because who doesn’t love having their data sold, right?
Dukakis posed in a tank with a helmet looking more like a goof than a commander. Trump took the joke and ran with it years later - still a classic political meme fail.
Mountain Dew let the internet name their flavors. Guess who hijacked the contest? 4chan, with hilarious and wild results. Because of course they did.
Lars Ulrich went nuclear on Napster users in 1999, threatening legal action and calling out his biggest fans. Now Metallica is ‘the band that sued their own fans.’ Ouch.
Romney’s team had a gift-winning president, but messed up playoffs of huge blunders: awful tax return moves, tone-deaf speeches, dumb foreign trips, and alienating voters left and right. The result? Political history in the making.
Malaysia Airlines offered free tickets if you shared your bucket list. Super fun, until, well… it wasn’t. Yeah, some things just don’t mix well.
A Cleveland rock station said they were shutting down… on April 1. Tons of fans tuned in for the ‘last shows’ only to get pranked. Dad still won’t forgive them 20 years later.
Cosby asked fans to make memes of him on Twitter. Spoiler: It wasn’t pretty, and Twitter can be savage.
MTV ran a contest giving fans a chance to have Anthrax over to jam. They showed up and TOTALLY trashed the place. Oops?
In WWI, Germany emailed Mexico to attack the US and offered Texas back. The British decoded it and showed the world. When asked if it was legit, the German dude basically said, ‘Yep.’ Facepalm and instant PR disaster.
A news reporter called every congressional office asking if their boss was gay. One guy called a press conference denying it. The public and media reaction? No one even thought you were gay until now. Classic PR fail.
KFC tried to bring back Colonel Sanders with some creepy marketing angles. Sometimes, less is more, KFC.
Steve Ballmer went full ape at a Microsoft event dancing and yelling wildly. It’s become a legendary viral clip of what happens when PR gets a little too much energy.
Starbucks tried a #RaceMatters campaign where baristas awkwardly asked customers if it was okay to say a super controversial word during karaoke. Yep, it went... not so well.
When announcing Xbox One, the presenter said, “We have a system for that, it’s called Xbox 360,” basically throwing shade at their previous console. Fans loved the burn; Microsoft maybe not so much.
Rick Perry had a moment on stage that made headlines for all the wrong reasons. Let’s just say the internet had a field day.
This movie title change from ‘John Carter of Mars’ to just ‘John Carter’ left fans scratching their heads. When you remove the cool parts of your title, you kind of lose something.
Joel Schumacher agreed to direct another Batman movie and... well, spoilers: fans didn’t love it. Some PR choices led to unforgettable reactions.
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