To be truly successful, you must be capable of learning from failure and not just your own. Paying attention to what the people around you are doing wrong is a great way to avoid making those mistakes yourself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Marketing is certainly no exception to that rule. And though the year is almost half over, we\u2019ve already seen plenty of bungles and blunders from big brands. Here are a few of our favorites, along with their takeaways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Blunder: <\/strong>Usually, a campaign is considered a resounding success when it goes viral. For one Domino\u2019s chain in Russia, however, it spelled disaster. Some remarkably ill-informed individual dreamed up a campaign called \u201cDomino\u2019s Forever.\u201d The concept was simple. Get a tattoo promoting Domino\u2019s Pizza, and you\u2019ll receive a certificate for 100 free pizzas for 100 years. As it turned out, the people behind the promotion greatly <\/strong>underestimated how far their fans were willing to go for free food. They swiftly ended the promotion after 381 people inked themselves<\/a>. In case you were wondering, that\u2019s a total of 38,100 free pizzas per year. The jury is still out on whether the brand awareness generated by the campaign is worth that much, but we\u2019re going to say it probably isn\u2019t. The Lesson: <\/strong>Know your audience. Also, never underestimate how far your customers are willing to go to get free stuff. Because they\u2019ll always <\/strong>go farther than you\u2019d expect. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Blunder: <\/strong>In April, Chase Bank tried to hijack the Monday Motivation Hashtag with some \u201cadvice\u201d on how they could save money \u2026 in the most condescending way possible. Unsurprisingly, people weren\u2019t exactly pleased with their tone-deaf attempt at outreach<\/a>. After being flayed by several prominent public figures, including Senator Elizabeth Warren<\/a>, the bank deleted the original tweet and sent out an apology \u2026 sort of<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur #MondayMotivation is to get better at #MondayMotivation tweets,\u201d it reads. \u201cThanks for the feedback Twitter world.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you ask us, they still missed the point. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Lesson: <\/strong>Do your research. Understand your market and your audience\u2019s sentiment. Even a bit of cursory effort by the people running Chase Bank\u2019s social media account would have been enough to know not only that the initial tweet was a bad idea, but why. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Blunder: <\/strong>If you have been paying any attention to gaming industry news, you have likely heard about Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford. To call the man polarizing would be something of an understatement. Over the course of <\/strong>the past six months alone,<\/strong> he has: Basically, he\u2019s a walking public relations nightmare, and no one seems to be doing anything about it. The Lesson: <\/strong>No matter how well-organized your marketing department, all your efforts to foster goodwill can be derailed by a single out of control executive. Your business absolutely <\/strong>needs guidelines around what\u2019s acceptable for both general employees and leadership on social media, with clear penalties for bad behavior. Market research. Audience awareness. PR guidelines. These are critical components of any successful marketing or ad campaign. Without them, you might well be the next brand to make a list like this one. To be truly successful, you must be capable of learning from failure and not just your own. Paying attention to what the people around you are doing wrong is a great way to avoid making those mistakes yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":140,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nNot So Motivational<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Pitching A Fit<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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