53 Ads That Went So Wrong People Couldn’t Believe It

Bud Light: The perfect beer for removing 'no' from your vocabulary.

ANY of the stuff PeTA pulls.

dreamqueen9103:
Oh man, I'm so glad press around PETA is going down, because every time I tell someone I'm a vegetarian they ask if I support PETA, or tell me how awful they are.

Look good in all you do, including beating women.

During the 1993 Canadian federal elections, the Progressive Conservative party released a tv ad mocking the leader of the Liberal Party, Jean Chretien, for his facial deformity. The backlash from the public was so drastic that the Conservative leader resigned, the conservatives went from holding a house majority with 169/295 seats to only winning 2/295 seats, and were stripped of their status as an official national party.

Tldr: Canadians put their government firmly in its place when they stopped being polite.

Well, my country tested their emergency radio broadcast this June, and afterwards, Wendy's came out with a radio commercial that started with "remain calm. This not a drill. The prices really ARE this low at Wendy's!!" Something to that effect. It sounded a lot like the emergency broadcast and freaked me the hell out everytime I heard it.

meltingdiamond:
In the US using the emergency broadcast noise in a commercial is illegal and people have gotten big fines for it.

"Make America great again" by someone who hates it.

Dr. Pepper Ten's "Not for women" campaign they had recently was a bizarrely sexist approach to take for marketing a diet soda.

TaylorS1986:
IIRC this is because diet sodas are apparently perceived as a "feminine" drink, so they were trying to fight that association, but they did it in the most idiotic, offensive, ham-fisted way possible.

When the hashtag #WhyIStayed, which was about people sharing their experience with domestic violence, trended on Twitter, the Digiorno Twitter account tweeted "#IStayedBecause you had pizza.".

anonymous:
I work in advertising. It is like this that makes me thank the lucky stars I work at the agency I do. We've put out some less than stellar ads, for sure. But I can gladly say that nobody at my agency has written copy or directed a spot that makes you just want to burrow deep, deep down into a hole because you are associated with it.

I guess nobody's mentioned this amazingly racist detergent ad from China yet?

YaketySnacks:
Well, it is also a shot for shot remake of a European commercial where it's a white man being turned into a black man and the tag line is "coloured is better". Not the best source material

I can't remember who/where it was, but I remembered seeing an ad from a golf course that was advertising a September 11 special. A round of golf for $9.11 "in honor of those who lost their lives."

Oh yeah, and also the spaghetti-os Pearl Harbor thing.

Nationwide ran a commercial during the super bowl with a kid that turns out to be passed away. The commercial was about avoidable accidents. People flipped out. Afterwards (same day I think) Nationwide said it wasn't to sell insurance but instead was intended to start a discussion. Based on how much a commercial costs during the super bowl it's an awfully expensive way to put out a talking point. Take it as you like.

GregBahm:
The goal of the commercial was not to sell insurance, but to prevent the accidents that nationwide insures against.
Say 100 million people buy an insurance policy with nationwide.
Now say 100 of those people run over kids. Nationwide has to pay million dollars each to the passed kid's families, leading to $100 million in costs.
Now say Nationwide pays for that commercial to be seen by its 100 million customers. Two of the customers that would have run over kids, think twice about reckless driving, and don't run over kids.
Nationwide makes two million dollars. If the ad was one million dollars, they made a million dollars profit.
It's a weird way to make money, but insurance companies make their money through the gap between people's fears of a bad thing happening, and that thing not actually happening. Most ads focus on maximizing that first part. This ad actually focused on maximizing that last part.

The Call of Duty Black Ops III ad campaign had someone on their official Twitter page post fake news headlines about Singapore being under attack, showing an explosion over the city, and declaring martial law.

Barxn:
I never quite understood the offence over that one. It was from the Call of Duty Twitter account - surely it was obvious that it was advertising fluff given the source?

Febrice:
The issue is that they changed their name to a made up news source. They also changed their profile picture. So we have a huge Twitter account with a news name and picture making news that seem real.

The 90's NFL ad about abortion was pretty bad.

My favorite part is when Mark Kelso says, "If you're in a crisis pregnancy right now, you're probably thinking what right do these highly paid athletes have to preach to me, and you'd be partly right," and then they just cut from him. It's incredibly awkward.

Anything by American Apparel.

I go to their website and the first thing I'm greeted by is a girl in a mesh shirt with nothing underneath and you can see her chest right through the mesh.

I try to browse through their clothes and it's all models in various states of undress. I see a yellow dress, I click on it, and the model has the dress hitched up pass her bum and you can see her wearing a thong.

Why would anyone want to buy the dress based on that picture?

Not a campaign, but generally sick advertising. Harbor City Funeral Home. These jerks have a habit of building their places right across from hospitals and retirement homes, just as a reminder to any old people that "this is your next stop".

When my grandma was sick, my mum requested to have her moved to the other side of the hospital, just so she didn't have to look at that pearl and marble building.

Ashley Maddison ran a standard "come to us for your affair" ad on Australian TV a little while ago. I'm pretty immune to their nonsense, plus if you need an internet service to have an affair, you're not really doing it right.

Anyway the thing that bothered me was they ran the ad during a 7-8 prime time slot. Kids are still watching that!

I made a complaint to the advertising standards bureau and apparently lots of other people did too as they replied to my complaint 24 hours later saying that the response to the ad was overwhelmingly negative and it would be pulled immediately.

Spotify ad where cars start honking. I'm in my car thinking that someone's here honking for me to go on a red light.

Carl's Jr. "If it doesn't get all over the place, it doesn't belong in your face" and then just breasts everywhere. I remember they made a reference to "piece of meat" in one where the double entendre was either the burger or the model in a bikini.

Hooters had a mother's day deal where mothers ate for free, that day.

But nothing is ever truly free. Only her meal. Yours cost you money, as per usual, and a **very** deep disappointment from your mother, towards you. Coupled with the shame of the action involved.

The new Devour brand frozen dinner...

Commercial is a guy talking dirty to his mac-n-cheese and he ends up spanking it. Cut to the tag line "Food so good you want to fork." Makes me uncomfortable just watching it!