The point of PR is to handle public relations. These essential parts of organizations handle messages that go out to the public often working (or not) with marketing departments to get relevant and attention-generating messages to audiences. Despite this, they sometimes screw up.
1. Ogilvy Shoots a Child in the Face to Sell Beds (2014)
There are times when either advertisements or ideas are so terrifically bad, it boggles the mind how it ever reached approval. Ogilvy India’s idea to promote a brand of mattress by showing Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani activist who was shot in the face in 2013, with the tag “Bounce Back.” The advertisement as shown above depicts Yousafzai being shot in the face by the Taliban before bouncing off a mattress to receive an award. Obviously this ad didn’t go over very well, with, well, anyone.
2. Czech Government Sees the Positives of Smoking Deaths (2001)
Philip Morris, one of the largest global tobacco corporations, published a study that highlighted the benefits of smoking deaths in the Czech Republic. The report was published after complaints from government officials that the proliferation of tobacco products was giving the country larger future expenses for medical treatment. Morris’s study was presumably conducted in response to these concerns yet again. No one seemed to notice the downside of telling a government it was okay for increasing medical costs on smokers because most of them would die too early to need them. An apology was issued shortly afterwards.
3. Urban Outfitters Sells Holocaust Shirts (2015)
Urban Outfitters has been criticized in the past for releasing clothing lines that were viewed as less than tasteful, such as a line of shirts that made light of mental illness. However, last year they reached new heights with their allegedly accidental poor choices by releasing a shirt that resembled uniforms worn by gay prisoners of Nazi concentration camps. How they stumbled across a similar design choice at all is beyond me.
4. Bill Cosby and Jared Fogle (2014, 2015)
While not a direct PR mishap, these two very known figures were closely tied to brands and often seen as the face of their respective works. Both Bill Cosby and Jared Fogle came under fire in recent years in response to the revealing of their sexual exploitations. Fogle pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography, as well as large amounts of Subway jokes. Bill Cosby has been accused of sexual assault by over 50 women during the length of his career. In both instances, the companies tied to these individuals abandoned them quickly and efficiently in order to mitigate the damages as best they could.
5. BP Handles PR Worse than the Spill (2010)
In 2010, BP faced the largest accidental oil spill in history after the destruction of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. In the midst of their laughable efforts to contain the liquid that threatened the Gulf of Mexico and its beaches, it also attempted to stem the criticisms lashed against the company, with equally miserable results. In addition to downplaying the size of the spill, BP also was allegedly trying to shift blame onto TransOcean, the owners of the rig. 11 rig workers also disappeared in the explosion and the ensuing destruction, causing chaos for the families as well as the fishermen who found their livelihood threatened. Compensation to those who lost their jobs was uneven, with many claiming the lawyers took massive chunks of the settlement and highlighting the continued presence of oil on the coastlines. All in all, it could’ve been handled a little bit better presumably.
