Another in the series of “company ends up giving away more than expected in a promotion” stories is the Pudding frequent flier miles. To sum up, Healthy Choice had a promotion on their frozen dinners whereby a customer could trade in proofs of purchase for frequent flier miles. But one David Phillips read the fine print on the promotion, and saw that even though it was only listed on the frozen dinners, all Healthy Choice products were eligible. So he bought several pallets of individual-serving pudding cups, at 25 cents each, and cashed them all in. When all was said and done, it averaged out to about $75 per round-trip overseas flight.
Well after. I think that ad campaign came out in 2006 (or maybe 2005) and “Chef’s Chocolate Salty Balls” (which I’m pretty sure is the episode you’re thinking of) aired in 1998.
The Mr. Hanky relationship aside, I always thought the thing kinda looked like Domo-kun.
I’m now not sure if these are UL’s or real because I can’t find a cite for the life of me.
I recall reading about a car dealership that printed coupons in the local paper for $100 off the price of a new car; however, they failed to print any conditions on the coupon. Some adventurous person went around town and bought all of the papers, clipped a couple hundred coupons and presented them to the dealership to purchase a new car. The dealership naturally refused because their intent was to limit the coupons to one per household. The customer took the issue to the local media and iirc, the dearlership ended up giving them the car.
A national hotel chain sent their customers a flyer thanking them for their recent stay and hope to see them back soon. The flyers were sent to the customer’s home addresses. Unfortunately, several MRS. customers weren’t aware that their (un)faithful husbands were renting hotel rooms… Oops.
Marketing faux pas extraordinaire.
Personally, I think Burger King’s creepy King dude is waaaay bad. <shiver>
A couple of gems from This site
I liked Bad Andy. His schtick was that he was mischevious and wanted to cut corners- besides misusing the hot bags, he also wanted to roll out the dough with a rolling pin rather than by hand. The tagline was “Bad Andy, good pizza.” I always figured he was a monkey or something- he was designed by the Henson company.
Then again, I liked Fudgems, too. Go figure.
they spoil the ending? Don’t they have any words for seeing ghosts or ESP or one who has any psychic powers?
Considering that my mother was using AYDS for appetite control in an effort to lose the excess weight she’d gained while carrying me, back in the Truman administration and at least two decades plus before the first recorded case of illness caused or exacerbated by the HIV-3 virus, this one is singularly inappropriate.
It’s like bawling out the phone company for introducing “911” as the emergency-services number back in the 1980s or 1990s, because it was disrespectful to the dead at the WTC.
Well, that was McDonald’s – you know, the place where they advertise their top-secret-recipe special sauce?! :eek:
An oldie but a goodie. Not marketing, or a blooper, but someone having a damn good time in their job, or committing career-suicide-by-humor. It’s now deleted from the original business news site, but I saw it when it was live on FinanceAsia.com.
:rolleyes:
Yes, and just months before the AIDS outbreak, AYDS was advertised with such fun slogans as
“Bloopers”, not “evil”.
Sheesh.
-Joe
VW’s Farfegnugen (or however it was spelled).
Fahrvergnügen. Fahren = ‘to drive’. Vergnügen = ‘pleasure’. So, ‘driving pleasure’.
Supposedly, it can also be translated as “driving orgasm.”
That was so not a blooper. You remember it, it’s positive, silly, and created the ‘funkengrooven’ ripoff.
And did exactly nothing to inspire me to want to buy a VW. The only reason I remember it was because it was just mentioned on the episode I’m listening to of “Says You” on NPR.
We had a recent marketing blooper here in Kansas City.
Our beloved Royals baseball team used to have an awesome promotion where if they got 12 hits in a home game, fans won a dozen donuts from Krispy Kreme!! All you had to do was show your ticket at the KK store and you had until the end of the season to redeem it. Pretty cool, because as most baseball fans know, 12 hits in one game is rare for the Royals. It made the games fun because any time they got to 10 or 11 hits everyone would chant “Let’s go, Do-Nuts, clap, clap, clap-clap-clap!” and the player that got the 12th hit in a game usually got a standing ovation!
Well, this year for some reason KK decided not to renew the promotion, but luckily for Royals fans, the Panera Bread bagel shop picked up the mantle and upped the ante: This year, it was announced that when the Royals got 13 hits in a home game, fans in attendance could pick up a Bakers Dozen of Bagels at their local Panera store when they showed their ticket. What’s not to love about that?
Early in the season over 30,000 (probably double what is average attendance lately) fans showed up for a Friday night game vs Detroit and the Royals (somehow) came through with 13 hits!! Sweet! Free bagels for the weekend!!
Here’s where the marketing blooper comes in: The catch to this giveaway was Panera only gave fans* 4 days to redeem tickets!!* People mobbed the stores (it’s about $15.00 worth of free bagels after all!!), they ran out of bagels everywhere and by the Monday after the game Panera CANCELLED THE WHOLE PROMOTION!!!
Their excuse was that the Royals “misled” them to the # of fans that actually redeem their tickets and they couldn’t keep up with demand, but what they failed to realize was that giving people more time to cash in the prize also caused people to forget, lose their tickets, etc.
Then to just cancel the whole thing rather than change it? Why not just give fans more time to redeem? Or change it to give away half a dozen? They sure lost my business handling it so poorly, and probably many other customers, too.
It all made more sense when we realized Panera is based in St. Louis…probably Cardinals fans!! 
<hijack>mobo85, you’re the only other person I’ve ever met (besides me) who has even HEARD of that book, let alone read it!!! I feel so much better. :D</hijack>
And companies still don’t learn from this . Three years ago the *Daily Express *ran a promotion “A £10 Cruise For All Our Readers” . All you had to do was to collect 40 tokens printed in the paper, send off your £10 and you would get a cruise either in the Med, the Red Sea or the Caribbean, including flights and transfers. What the paper was banking on was that the participants would want to take a partner with them and pay over the £1,000 for the privilege , or buy some extra and expensive add-ons.
This did not happen because many people opted to go on their own and not buy any extras. Hundreds of people are still waiting for their cruise and have now started to sue the paper in the small-claims court to get what they were promised. This has been a marketing disaster for the paper. Mind you it’s such a horrible publication I am glad they have caught a cold over this.
Another famous UK marketing disaster dates back to 1959 when cigarette commercials were still allowed on TV. The advert depicted a man walking down a street all alone, in the dead of night . He stops and lights his cigarette and a voice-over intones “You’re never alone with a Strand”. This bombed because many people associated the brand with loners who could not make any friends. It soon disappeared off the market
Of course not, you’ve got your lighter.
And your oxygen tank.