Costly Marketing Mistakes Trivia Quiz

Answer: Mars, Inc.

The producers of "E.T." initially went to Mars, Inc. and asked if they could utilize Mars' flagship candy called M&Ms. Mars turned down this offer. Various reasons have been given over the years including they did not want their candy associated with an extra-terrestrial or that they thought the movie would never be a hit and they did not want to be considered a failure.

The producers then turned to Hershey's who agreed to run a million dollars in advertising for the right to have their product in the film. The movie, released in 1982, was a blockbuster hit and within two weeks of the premiere the sale of Reese's Pieces was tripled.

This marketing faux pas by Mars has been used as an example about taking risks and measuring potential impact of an idea. Even if a proposition could at first appear unworthy of resources, careful study may reverse that initial idea.

Answer: Hoover

In 1992, the British division of the Hoover Company threw out an idea to a promotion and risk management firm. They wanted to give away free round trip tickets to the U.S. or Europe for the sale of a vacuum cleaner over $125 at the time. The firm strongly urged against it but Hoover ignored them. Almost as soon as the advertisement hit the papers, consumers took them up on the offer.

Hoover had assumed most people would not read the fine print and go through the arduous application process. They were wrong. They sold almost $52 million in vacuum cleaners with airline ticket costs of close to $175 million. Hoover reacted by finding "faults" in the applications, limiting flights to almost non-existent selections, and dragging their feet on responses. They cancelled the promotion and never recovered from the hit.

Hoover served to show the marketing community how important it is to factor in some of the things recommended by the consulting company. Underestimating consumer response and not assessing risk factors can be detrimental. Finally, simple math could have been used to show price versus cost.

Answer: Brass knuckles

EA (Electronic Arts) released the first Godfather video game in 2006. It was a success and by 2009 they were ready to release "Godfather II". Before the general release, EA sent out boxed sets of the game to journalists and video reviewers. Included with the game was a set of real brass knuckles since that weapon was featured in the game.

What EA did not take into consideration is the fact that brass knuckles are illegal in some countries and in some states in America. EA, upon realizing the problem, attempted to contact the recipients (many of whom were teenagers). They told the recipients to mail them back. However, it is also illegal in some areas to mail the weapons. So then they had to devise disposal methods for the users. This fiasco was compounded by the fact the game itself did poorly in sales.

This mistake by EA is used as a cautionary tale in marketing to remind others to fully investigate the legal implications of any campaign.

Answer: Dove

In 2017, Dove launched a social media ad, primarily on Facebook, which showed a black woman removing a shirt and appearing to transform into a white woman removing a similar shirt. The backlash was immediate as consumers saw this as Dove stating that their product can wash the "dirty black skin" and make it into "acceptable clean white skin".

Dove deleted the ad and issued a series of apologies. Further compounding Dove's problems, though, was the fact that in 2011 they had released another advertisement showing "before" and "after" skin care where the before was black and the after was white. Social media users were outraged this was a second offense.

It's hard to quantify exactly how much money Dove lost due to this specific racial marketing campaign, but the estimates are in the millions. It served as a lesson to others to analyse potential interpretations of marketing messages, especially when dealing with sensitive issues like race.

Answer: New Coke

In 1985, Coca-Cola had seen Pepsi's market shares creep up from the successful "Pepsi Challenge" marketing campaign. The executives at Coca-Cola decided it was the taste of their best-selling drink, Coke, that was the issue. In a bold move, they retired the decades-old recipe into the company vault and focused on the new recipe that was quite sweeter tasting.

They did a huge and costly marketing campaign to introduce "New Coke" to the world. Coca-Cola president Donald Keough proudly said: "I've never been as confident about a decision as I am about the one we're announcing today." Unfortunately, the public did not feel that way. Within weeks, literally thousands of angry phone calls were flooding the Coca-Cola lines. Only 79 days later, the company had reversed the plan and put "Coca-Cola Classic" back.

Even though Coca-Cola had done its own taste tests across the country, the mistake they made was underestimating the emotional attachment people had to the brand itself. In all their testing, they had asked if people liked the taste of the new formula but did not ask if they would be upset if it replaced the old formula.

Answer: Their logo

For twenty years, since 1999, Gap had a distinctive, simple logo which was a blue square with the word "GAP" in white written across it. On October 6, 2010, with no warning to the public at all, the company released a new logo showing a large word "Gap" and a small blue box in the upper right. It was reported to have cost $100 million for the design change. Social media was soon covered up with people's dismay.

Gap immediately started fielding excuses as to why they did this change. Among these, they said it was a crowd sourcing event in order to gauge people's reactions. When all this fell flat, Gap issued apologies and, in less than a week, reverted back to their old logo.

Gap learned a valuable lesson and showed others how important logos are to the consumers. It is what most people think of immediately upon hearing the name of a product or company. Changing something so fundamental without advance warning can subconsciously bring customers doubt and feelings of being abandoned.

Answer: True

In the 1970s, baby boomers were looking for quick and easy meals and the frozen food market was very successful. Gerber, known for years for their baby food line, decided to take advantage of this need. In 1974, they introduced "Gerber Singles". These were pureed foods like beef burgundy, Mediterranean vegetables, and sweet and sour pork in small baby food jars.

Gerber marketed these as "Something to eat when you are alone" which made it sound like sad, depressed people ate these. Between that and the extreme similarity in consistency and taste to the baby food, the campaign was a failure.

The lesson Gerber ended up teaching others is that execution of an idea is as important as the concept itself. It made sense to use their manufacturing processes and even their raw materials to serve the quick-meal market. However, baby boomers did not want to eat the same food they did as infants and a better audience might have been aging, nursing home patients.

Answer: American

In 1981, American Airlines needed some cash on their books. So they came up with a marketing campaign called AAirpass (sic). This meant that people could buy a ticket for $250,000 (roughly $850,000 in 2025) that would allow them to fly anywhere in the world, first class, for the rest of their lives. There were hardly any terms and conditions to this ticket.

Sixty-six people took advantage of this offer and several used it very extensively, costing American millions of dollars and lost opportunities. Some of these customers took hundreds of flights per year or would book a ticket and then cancel at the last minute. Two of the users alone racked up 50 million flight miles. When American tried to revoke their rights, there was social backlash. The airline eventually cancelled the program.

American showed others in the marketing community that a thorough cost-benefit analysis needs to be completed in a campaign. If the value to the consumer is greater than the ultimate value to the business, the campaign needs to be reviewed. Also, campaigns with little to no terms or limits can be extremely costly.

Answer: Twitter

In 2012, McDonald's had just done a successful Twitter campaign called #MeetTheFarmers where farmers talked about how they got their food grown and shipped in the supply chain. Following up on this, McDonald's did a second Twitter campaign that year. This was called #McDStories and was supposed to be where people wrote in warm memories of times spent at various McDonald's locations.

Unfortunately, the twitter responses soon spiralled into a series of complaints about McDonald's food and employees. People used profanity and wrote about horrible experiences at the restaurants. The chain had to shut this campaign down within days of it being published and its reputation and sales took a hit.

What marketing channels took away from this is to be sure to select the right kind of social media platform for a campaign. Perhaps consumers would have been less likely to post pictures on a platform than to create free-form text. Also, it was learned that opening up campaigns to a broad subject can be dangerous and it is better to narrow the questions to things like a particular product or a particular locale.

Answer: Eggnog

In 2015, Bloomingdale's tried a marketing holiday campaign that was to have a suggestive edginess to it. Their ad featured the words "Spike your best friend's eggnog when they're not looking" and a picture of a man next to a woman who was looking away from him. This did not garner the kind of holiday joy Bloomingdale's had envisioned.

Instead, social media lit up with outrage. People immediately saw this as an encouragement of date rape and date rape drugging. Bloomingdale's changed the ad and issues many apologies. The failed marketing campaign came at a terrible fiscal time as this was during the Christmas holiday season.

This marketing mistake highlights the need to study the broader social impact of the campaigns. Any suggestion needs to be vetted out to make sure it does not condone or encourage activities such as non-consensual acts or criminal behaviours.