What Were They Thinking?
Despite the best-laid plans, history is littered with tales of businesses whose marketing stunts ran amok.
According to a 1926 Associated Press article, there was a candy company in Berlin that tried dropping foil-wrapped chocolates on its citizens to advertise their services. But police had to step in after they received complaints of injuries from the falling sweets.
To help you learn from other business’s mistakes–and avoid these PR nightmares–we feature the first in this week-long series of some marketing stunts that flopped.
In 2005, Snapple attempted to erect the world’s largest popsicle, made of frozen Snapple juice, twenty-five feet tall and weighing 17.5 tons, in Times Square.
But the company didn’t count on the 80-degree weather and the frozen tower melted, sending kiwi-strawberry-flavored fluid pouring onto the streets of downtown Manhattan.
Lesson Learned: It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Stunts take planning–a lot of it–and not taking even the smallest detail–the weather–into account can really trip you up.
Photo by Entrepreneur.
AnnaLaura Brown on October 8th, 2007 8:44 am
What if instead, they had planned out when and where they were going to drop their sweets? Such as at parades and other similar events. It could have worked very well then.
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