Are These The Worst Ads of All Time?
From sexism to suicide, these commercials should‘ve come with a trigger warning.
A lot of effort goes into making an advertisement. From concept/storyboarding to casting and scripting, there’s no shortage of opportunities for someone, anyone really, to stop and ask themselves, “are we potentially making the most offensive ad of all time?” But that didn’t stop these ads from getting the green light and making their way onto tv screens, Twitter feeds, in magazines, and eventually onto this list of the worst ads of all time.
1. Holiday Inn
In 1997, Holiday Inn released a Super Bowl commercial titled “A New Look.” Its goal was to show the audience that the hotel chain was going to be spending a billion dollars making over their hotel rooms in the coming years. The commercial, however, featured exactly zero images of the hotel or hotel rooms. Instead, it featured a tall blonde woman walking through a class reunion. As she’s walking through the reunion crowd, a narrator begins to list off various plastic surgery procedures the woman has received and how much each of them costs. The camera zooms in on each area as it’s listed, to really drive home the point. But don’t worry, it gets worse.
Eventually, she runs into an old classmate, who appears excited to see her, until he realizes (to his dismay) that the tall blonde woman in front of him used to be his old classmate Bob. Bob Johnson.
As you can imagine, the commercial received quite the backlash, but not for the reason you’d think. It was the Southern Baptist Church that was up in arms about the ad saying, “I know a lot of churches have done a lot of business with Holiday Inn through the years, including our church, and we’re going to reconsider that now in light of this type of ad and the kind of values, or lack of values, that this ad manifests on their part” (their words, NOT mine).
At the time, most people thought it was hilarious, and despite the backlash, the majority of Holiday Inn franchise owners actually “thought that the ad did a good job of explaining what was happening at Holiday Inn.”
The only thing Holiday Inn did a “good job” of was actually using a trans woman in the ad, but comparing a hotel room makeover to gender-affirming surgery? That’s a no from me.
The transgender community, to this day, continues to face extreme threats and acts of violence due to discrimination fueled by ideology portrayed in the reaction from the Southern Baptist Church. And unfortunately, it’s only getting worse. 2020 was the most violent year on record for transphobic violence, and as of writing this article, the first four months of 2021 have seen a 100% increase in deaths of transgender individuals. Using transitioning as the butt of a joke is not ok, especially as a company that stands to profit off of that joke, with no intention of bringing awareness to the violence facing the transgender community, or donating any of their profits to help the community.
2. Hyundai Europe (TW: Suicide)
In 2013, Hyundai Europe released an ad depicting a man in his garage, alone, with the door shut and the car running… I’ll let you piece together what was going on. At the end of the commercial, it shows that he was unsuccessful in his “attempt” when he opens the garage door and walks back into his house as the words “THE NEW ix35 WITH 100% WATER EMISSIONS” appear in all caps on the screen.
As if using a suicide attempt as the entire premise for a publicly-aired car commercial isn’t abhorrent enough, the fact that the director chose to depict it in such painstaking detail is mindboggling. It has more detail than we’re used to seeing in some movies, and for what? To advertise a car!?
Not to mention, studies have shown that depicting images of suicide typically leads to an increase in suicide attempts in the months that follow, leading many people to question what Hyundai was actually attempting to advertise with a commercial like this.
3. Pepsi (Yes, THAT Pepsi commercial)
In 2017, Pepsi released a commercial titled, “Live For Now”. The ad begins with crowds of protesters marching through the streets with signs that say things like “peace” and “love” and… “Join the Oconversation” (whatever that means).
At the same time, Kendell Jenner coincidentally has a photoshoot in a building the protesters are marching right past. During the shoot, she sees the smiling faces of all the protesters and decides that whatever they’re doing looks like a lot more fun than her super fancy photoshoot. So she ditches her blonde wig, wipes off her red lipstick (and at some point changes into a completely different outfit?), and takes to the streets alongside the protesters.
Later on, in the commercial, we realize that it’s a good thing Kendall Jenner decided to join the protesters when they reach a grumpy-looking police barricade. It appears at this point all the fun must come to an end until Jenner pulls an ice-cold Pepsi from a (conveniently placed) cooler and hands it to one of the police officers. He takes a sip and everyone cheers! Yay Pepsi!
I’m not really sure what Pepsi thought they were going to accomplish with this watered down, white savior version of a civil rights protest, but considering the amount of violence BIPOC communities face at the hands of the police, maybe implying that a single can of Pepsi is the solution isn’t such a good idea. And I’m not the only one who felt that way.
4. Giant Food
In November of 2020, the grocery chain Giant Food released an ad in the December issue of their magazine, Savory, with a headline that read, “Hosting? Plan a Super Spread.” [insert facepalm]
The grocery chain did eventually apologize, and pulled the ad from the digital version of their magazine, but not before traumatizing their customers with reminders of the years’ deadly super spreader events. Not to mention the fact that we were STILL in the middle of a pandemic, and “hosting” family and friends for the holidays wasn’t even an option for much of the world. I find it hard to believe no one caught the reference before it made it to print, making me wonder whether the “gaffe” was actually unintentional.
5. Burger King UK
You might find it hard to believe that this next marketing fail happened as recently as this year (or maybe you don’t), but on March 8, 2021 (International Women’s Day), Burger King UK set the entirety of Twitter on fire with a single tweet:
Yes, they tweeted that *on purpose* and not only that, they followed it up with two tweets promoting the launch of their new scholarship program meant to “help female Burger King employees pursue their culinary dreams!”
Great. Love that. It’s certainly a worthy cause, BKUK, but did you have to announce it by using, quite possibly, one of the most sexist tropes on a platform that is known for being particularly abusive towards women? It’s obvious what they were trying to do here, and one could argue that they accomplished their goal. They certainly got a lot more attention than they would have by simply tweeting about the scholarship program without the… ahem… intro. But they also accomplished creating an incredibly toxic environment for women in the replies under the original tweet.
In fact, after initially refusing to remove the tweet in the face of backlash, they were eventually forced to delete it due to “abusive comments in the thread.”
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from these major marketing fails, it’s that sensitive subjects like suicide, deadly worldwide pandemics, and jokes about marginalized communities simply don’t belong in marketing, advertisements, and certainly not on any brand’s Twitter account!
I recently started a top-five fails series on my YouTube channel where, each week, I break down five of the worst marketing fails I’ve ever seen. Come check ’em out if you’d like more content like this!
