Ask Lemmy

Australian supermarket promoting the freshness of their produce on ANZAC day, the national holiday in rememberance of fallen soldiers.

Woolworths takes down Anzac 'Fresh in our Memories' website after social media backlash

We have a new contender

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c17ynlek5djo

That one Pepsi ad where there is a protest and a woman gives a cop a pepsi so they're all friends now. This was around the time of the first Trump admin and BLM protests.

A local bank once did a mailed ad campaign that went along the lines of:

"Tired of living with your parents? Check out our mortgage rates" and stuff along the lines of your parents won't be doing your laundry anymore.

Like have they never heard of renting?

i can only pick one?

twizzlers and lawn care ads have been leaning heavy on AI slop and the lack of good writing and ideas is really showing lately. none of it is remotely cohesive.

Really strange Applebee's ad during news coverage about war in Ukraine, ad at roughly 0:27 - https://www.mediaite.com/media/tv/applebees-apologizes-pulls-ads-after-cnn-plays-annoying-commercial-during-invasion-of-ukraine/

Blizzard's "Do you guys not have phones?" blunder during the Diablo Immortal reveal

We've just had a campaign on our city's public transport trams that said "I'm identifying as a trolleybus".

During pride month, nonetheless.

And

The latest I can think of is Gwyneth Paltrow's ad for a luxury condo project on stolen Palestinian land by Israel.

Amazon spent millions on a single Ring ad during the Super Bowl that was so poorly received it killed a multi-million dollar business deal.

To be clear, all the companies involved are the worst of the worst, so fuck them, but all they had to do was nothing and it would have turned out better (for them, worse for the rest of us).

That Pepsi ad during BLM.

I still think that the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) remarketing themselves after decades of abuse scandals, and they settle on the name "Scouting America" or... SA...

I get that they wanted to make scouting an all gender thing. That's good.... but they probably shoulda workshopped that name a bit more given the history and context of the organization.

I live in a neighborhood where every day I see more and more people who can't make ends meet. Shops and services are closing every month and the storefronts stand empty.

The bank near me has signs up in their window "Celebrating 250 Years of the American Dream!"

Read the fucking room.

There was an ad from Coke entirely generated by AI last Christmas. It wasn’t even cute or on point, there was editing error, etc. People complained so much that they pulled out the ad

I remember General Electric got a lot of flak for a commercial of theirs, meant to "celebrate America's hard workers" or whatever.

They used the song Sixteen Tons.

What inspired the post: a cigarette lighter that was handed out as part of an election campaign with the slogan “FOR OUR CHILDREN” on it. The lighter is too bulky for children’s hands /s

I JUST read an article about Starbuck's bungled Gwangju promo in Korea. I'm betting that inspired this post, but if not, look it up, it's a great example.