Marketing doesn't have to be terrifying
We've assembled a collection of marketing horror stories and downloadable checklists to ensure your brand never ends up walking blindly into the night... Terrifying.
Nothing could be more spine chilling than losing customers or sacrificing precious time to find leads that go nowhere. Or worse yet… pouring resources into finding leads with no return.
Many business owners find themselves so overwhelmed with the high demands of running their business, their marketing tends to fall to the wayside, and they’re left wondering why their brand has no audience.
1. Read the horror stories below from well-known brands who had their marketing gone wrong.
2. Then download the checklist associated with the topic of your choice to make marketing your business easy and effective.
3. Or, if you prefer, download the monster checklist filled with all the tips and tricks compiled into one file, so you can protect your business against making it on next year’s list of marketing horror stories.
Content Marketing
Nesquik’s bunny ear content flop.
When a well-intended campaign turns into a ghost town online.
Content Marketing could be one of your marketing strategy’s most successful components - yet over 63% of marketers don’t have a defined strategy. In 2013, Nesquik, the maker of the delicious flavored milk we know and love, declared September 16th “National Bunny Ears Day” in hopes to drive engagement with their brand. They released an iPhone app which placed bunny ears on every photo, and requested users to tag Nesquik in their photos online, so the best ones could be featured on the brand’s Facebook gallery. What Nesquik failed to realize, is that their users didn’t care enough about a made up holiday to have to download yet another photo app to their phone only to have a selfie with bunny ears posted on Facebook. The brand only received 11 mentions on social media, and 2 tagged images from the campaign.
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This goes to show that by not understanding your audience, and what your customers would really like to see, your marketing efforts may fall short of expectations. Needless to say, for most marketers, their content marketing is a zombie. Aimlessly wandering around, searching for anyone or anything which it can get its hands on. No real focus, no real intent other than to feed itself.
Email Marketing
Macy’s unresponsive email design frustrations.
Failing to optimize for mobile can put any campaign 6 feet under.
With 269 billion emails being sent out every day, and the stats rising every day, reaching your ideal audience has never been easier, yet simultaneously...more difficult. There’s an ocean of competition, and brands are scrambling to be in the forefront of their audience’s attention. That’s why it’s so important that when you send out marketing emails, you create them strategically and correctly with your end-users in mind.
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Take the infamous example of Macy’s, for instance. With such a wide range of products, their website (and emails) tend to be very complex. However, with the majority of users now viewing email on mobile, complexity is rarely a good thing. Macy’s continues to fail to optimize their campaigns for mobile, leaving their myriad of links in such a small font, you can barely read what it says, let alone click. By providing such a complicated experience to consumers, Macy’s missed the mark, and was sent into the grisly depths of the “unsubscribe”.
Treat your audience to a better marketing experience.
We promise to only send you the good stuff. No spam.
Social Media
Miele’s subtly misogynistic social media campaign
Stop scaring away potential customers-- Don’t be a monster on social media.
Once you share something on social media, it’s out there for all the world to see... and to mock. And you better believe, even if you rush to delete that photo where “Bae caught you sleeping” (while the reflection behind you clearly shows you taking your own photo, selfie-style) someone probably already took a screenshot to use for a meme. This is just one of many reasons social media fails can turn into a scary situation, for any brand.
The internet is littered with social media fails from brands most people feel “should have known better”, but clearly didn't. Like that time when Miele attempted to share their support for International Women's Day but instead took us right back to the 50s. The post featured an image of a group of women lounging about on a washer and dryer. And for reasons unknown, the photo also shows one woman throwing rose petals into the air while a cake sits casually atop the pair of machines, which made us (and the rest of cyber-space) wonder… how is this photo supposed to make us feel? Many social media users were left scratching their heads in confusion, while some were outraged that the company chose to share a photo aimed at celebrating strong women (we assume), but instead showed women in a dated, and stereotypical, gender role. In 2019, your posts have the potential to be seen by BILLIONS of people. Don’t make them regret following you in the first place.
Branding
Dove’s Racist Ad
How one mistake can hurt your entire brand identity.
When Dove first launched the “Real Beauty Campaign”, and begin the brand’s shift toward a new ethical and moral standing in the marketplace, they could have never predicted the disasters that were awaiting them. Even with a decade of sweat, (blood?), and tears poured into building up their positive image, one simple mistake practically destroyed their brand overnight. In 2017, they released a campaign with the hopes of further deepening their mission of inclusivity by showcasing a short clip of three women removing their top to represent the cleanliness and revitalization from Dove products. Except, their audience was outraged when the black woman removed hers, to reveal a white woman underneath. The media was in a frenzy, and a boycott ensued on social media with the hashtag #BoycottDove.
The company lost thousands of customers, and trust from the marketplace. They may have had pure motives, I’ll leave that up to you to decide.
User Experience (UX)
Netflix’s Auto Preview Feature
The evil auto preview ghost has taken over everyone’s Netflix...
Grab the sage, we’re cleansing my house of evil spirits tonight! I mean, there must be some sort of paranormal activity in my television, because there’s just no way a company as large as Netflix would force me to watch such intrusive autoplay previews without my consent-- or even a way to turn them off. Do they understand their user’s needs or search habits at all?
Netflix rolled out its auto preview feature in 2016, in order to combat the overload of new shows and content on the platform. The idea was for users to be immediately drawn into a show, thus helping them cut down on decision time. Unfortunately, Netflix failed to recognize the fact that many users actually enjoy being able to aimlessly scroll through the options and read the descriptions. There’s a running joke online that the only way to turn off the auto preview feature on the platform is to cancel your subscription, and much to Netflix’s dismay, many users have been doing just that.
Are you tricking or treating your audience?
We promise to only send you the good stuff. No spam.
Market Research
Colgate’s Frozen Dinner Debacle
A wicked story about market research gone awry.
In 1982, Colgate decided to diversify its portfolio and branch out to the frozen food section with individualized ready-to-eat dinners. (They must have thought their customers would enjoy a nice beef lasagna before brushing their teeth). But because Colgate is well known for their toothpaste, consumers were associating a minty taste with each bite; which for most people isn’t the kind of taste you want for dinner. Customers were confused.
If the brand had done their due diligence and conducted in-depth market research, they would have discovered that consumers weren’t running to the frozen food aisle to have toothpaste meals.
Pay-Per-Click Marketing (PPC)
eBay’s terrifying Google Adwords Mistakes
Correctly using Google Ads can make or break a campaign.
Once the second-largest spender on Google Ads in the retail industry, eBay was quoted not long ago about the frustrations they’ve seen with the platform in being able to secure leads. But much to their dismay, the problem wasn’t with Google, but with their own horrific strategy… or lack-there-of.
You may have seen eBay’s bone-chilling campaigns circulating around the web, advertising for things such as “Sell Your Soul On eBay”, or “Buy New And Used Babies”. eBay used a function inside Google Ads called Dynamic Keyword Insert (DKI) for their campaigns. With DKI, the ad automatically inserts the keywords a searcher uses in order to (hopefully) drive conversions and relevancy. However, it can lead to some horrific results when the proper parameters aren’t set in place. For example, say you typed in the keyword “baby”. The dynamic ad would insert that word into the title, giving us eBay's infamous ad for purchasing “used babies” online. Mistakes like these can land even the most creative campaigns six feet under, and there’s nothing worse than spending money on improperly executed ads that end up actually driving your audience away.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
JC Penney’s unauthorized spam links
The dark side of link schemes and black hat tactics.
It’s no secret that showing up on the first page of Google’s search engine results is paramount to the success of your business online. Although Google isn’t direct in every aspect of how they determine a site’s ranking, they draw a hard line between what they consider the “right” and “wrong” way (white hat vs black hat) of getting to the top, and obtaining links from outside sources is one of the strongest ways to rank.
In 2011, JC Penney was found by Google to be involved in a massive black hat link scheme, when what seemed like overnight, they were ranking number one for hundreds of different keywords. Upon investigation, Google found thousands of links going back to JC Penney’s page from all over the web. Sites related to nuclear engineering were advertising for things like “evening gowns” and “low-rise jeggings”, with a link directly back to JC Penney’s website. It appeared to be that someone had purchased a link from thousands of sites around the web in order to boost search engine rankings. Penney’s swore they had no idea where the links came from, but even so, the Google God’s didn’t take kindly to the black hat tactics, and the retail giant was immediately shot down to the 5th or 6th page, which is essentially death by SEO standards.
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