Balenciaga’s Kinky Little Bears
The advertisement: Fashion brands have always pushed the envelope, but Balenciaga pushed things a bit too far during the 2022 holiday season when one of its Instagram ads featured photos of teddy bears dressed in bondage gear (chains, fishnet, leather harnesses)—with kids posing next to them. The firestorm was immediate. “Here you have a major international retail brand promoting kiddie porn and sex with children,” Tucker Carlson told his viewers. Photographer Gabriele Galimberti’s explanation that the bears’ style was punk, not S&M, didn’t help. The Spanish fashion house stalled before apologizing, even as it tried to pin responsibility on the “parties responsible for creating the set.”
The Takeaway: Don’t deflect blame for your screwups—and keep the risqué stuff for the grown-up models.
Take My Identity, Please!
The advertisement: In 2006, LifeLock CEO Todd Davis decided to do some gutsy marketing that would really get attention. And boy, did it. To prove his faith in his company, Davis not only launched ads promising $10 identity-theft protection, he put his own social-security number in them. The tactic failed. Badly. Davis’ identity was stolen 13 times by 2010, the same year that the FTC and 35 states charged the company with false advertising. LifeLock settled for $100 million.
The Lessons: Only promise what you’re certain you can deliver, and a publicity stunt does not good marketing make.
America’s Lethal Lager
The advertisement: Losing market share to the mighty Anheuser-Busch, Milwaukee’s hometown brew Schlitz bet the farm on a 1977 campaign that featured a behind-the-camera narrator asking a lumberjack and a boxer (among others) to give up their Schlitz for another beer brand. Taking great umbrage (“You want to take away my Schlitz?!”) the tough guys then intimated that the narrator wouldn’t survive his question. Consumers promptly dubbed the campaign “Drink Schlitz or I’ll Kill You.” Implied homicide notwithstanding, the ads felt strained, desperate and, at the very least, tasteless. Losing millions, Schlitz pulled the ads, fired the admen and, by 1981, shuttered its brewery.