What’s the most tone-deaf advertisement or marketing campaign you’ve ever seen?
The kind of thing which makes you say “how could they possibly have thought this was a good idea?”
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The kind of thing which makes you say “how could they possibly have thought this was a good idea?”
Australian supermarket promoting the freshness of their produce on ANZAC day, the national holiday in rememberance of fallen soldiers.
Woolworths takes down Anzac 'Fresh in our Memories' website after social media backlash
We have a new contender
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c17ynlek5djo
A local bank once did a mailed ad campaign that went along the lines of:
"Tired of living with your parents? Check out our mortgage rates" and stuff along the lines of your parents won't be doing your laundry anymore.
Like have they never heard of renting?
Blizzard's "Do you guys not have phones?" blunder during the Diablo Immortal reveal
that wasn't really a campaign or ad, just a gaff made by an out of touch dipshit during the reveal. It was still tonedeaf, sure, but it was hardly Blizzards marketing intention.
An out of touch dipshit? It was the principal game designer from blizzard lol. Plus pretty certain the "dipshit" in question was also not a fan of the mobile only idea.
We've just had a campaign on our city's public transport trams that said "I'm identifying as a trolleybus".
During pride month, nonetheless.
tramsgender
Is this a slur against the autistic?
Don't be so tramsphobic!
We had something similar, but it was just a play on the word transport and was just a normal bus and only for the pride parade we had, thankfully.
And
Nah, those are brilliant
I work in 911 dispatch, and there's a couple crematoriums in the county I work for. Once in a while they call to give us a heads-up when they're doing a cremation in case anyone calls about smoke.
We enter it as a "controlled burn" notification for our fire department, which I suppose it technically is, but it makes me chuckle a little that we're entering the same way we would as if someone was burning yard waste or having a bonfire or something.
I don't know how often they actually do cremations, I assume it's pretty frequent, and I'm not always the one getting the call, but based on how often I've seen these calls go in I don't think they do it for every cremation. I remember hearing somewhere through the grapevine that when the deceased is extremely obese they tend to really smoke up, so I kind of suspect those are the ones where they give us a heads-up.
Reminds me of an old billboard screw-up in Finland.
One billboard (I can't remember what the ad was actually for) was quoting an old saying: "If sauna, tar and booze won't help..." ("...the disease is going to kill you")
Next to it was an ad for a private clinic. "We've got everything to keep you healthy"
Peak of advertising, I bet these pictures spread on internet like wild fire
The latest I can think of is Gwyneth Paltrow's ad for a luxury condo project on stolen Palestinian land by Israel.
That's a good one.
Just in general, I get the feeling that she's not all there. You can probably sell her on anything.
Holy shit I already hated the woman but this is next level. Got any proof?
https://novaramedia.com/2026/06/10/gwyneth-paltrow-appears-in-ad-for-israeli-luxury-real-estate-developer/
Didn't think she could sink any lower and yet here we are
Just search for it on YouTube. Gwyneth Paltrow Israel ad.
shes been selling scams for quite a while, not surprising she is willing to do this.
Amazon spent millions on a single Ring ad during the Super Bowl that was so poorly received it killed a multi-million dollar business deal.
To be clear, all the companies involved are the worst of the worst, so fuck them, but all they had to do was nothing and it would have turned out better (for them, worse for the rest of us).
That Pepsi ad during BLM.
And The Boys remake of it a couple years later
In hindsight this has to be a far right psy op. It was a year after Trump was elected and they definitely wanted to see an end to both the BLM and MeToo movements.
I still think that the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) remarketing themselves after decades of abuse scandals, and they settle on the name "Scouting America" or... SA...
I get that they wanted to make scouting an all gender thing. That's good.... but they probably shoulda workshopped that name a bit more given the history and context of the organization.
The Secret Service is a thing and nobody bats an eye, sooo....
Right......
but the Secret Sevice was established in the mid 1800s... well before the abbreviation SS had other meanings.
The Scouts decided to rebrand a year ago... SA has been in use for over a decade now.
Hardly the same thing.
Not the same thing, true, but other organisations have been asked to rename and rebrand, no? I just sometimes wonder why that particular acronym is never questioned even in passing.
Probably because nobody calls it the SS
I've definitely seen that acronym used for the secret service
What else is it supposed to stand for? South Africa?
SA is also the abbreviation for sexual assault
Sturmabteilung, Hitler's personal storm troopers that helped him rise to power
probably not naming the organazation having abbreviation of "SA" too.
That's what they said...
The "hide the pain" facial expression really sells it.
I live in a neighborhood where every day I see more and more people who can't make ends meet. Shops and services are closing every month and the storefronts stand empty.
The bank near me has signs up in their window "Celebrating 250 Years of the American Dream!"
Read the fucking room.
There was an ad from Coke entirely generated by AI last Christmas. It wasn’t even cute or on point, there was editing error, etc. People complained so much that they pulled out the ad
The only thing I remembered about that commercial, is the number of tires changed in each shot...
All coke's still image ads are AI now. Clearly AI and creepy as fuck.
Here's one off their site:
It just gives you the ick when you see it in public.
At the same time a french supermarket chain released a human made animation which was a big success
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na9VmMNJvsA
I remember General Electric got a lot of flak for a commercial of theirs, meant to "celebrate America's hard workers" or whatever.
They used the song Sixteen Tons.
No way lmao
That's a new level of tonedeaf
There are multiple actual mercedes-benz commercials featuring the song "Mercedes Benz" by Janis Joplin, which is not-at-all-subtly mocking consumerism and purchasing status symbols
Or an incredible troll from the inside lol
Oh yeah. That reminds me a while ago there was some car ad, a car is driving in some beautiful remote mountainous area and the music playing is Major Tom.
I'm still laughing. Gonna die far away and alone in that tin can.
Oof, yeah, ouch. Reminds me of the time Mazda used the Lorax to promote an SUV they were selling. Totally would've answered with that, had I not remembered the GE thing.
What inspired the post: a cigarette lighter that was handed out as part of an election campaign with the slogan “FOR OUR CHILDREN” on it. The lighter is too bulky for children’s hands /s
That old Saturn Ion commercial. A car ad about a world without cars, accidentally showing what a complete waste of space their own product is.
I JUST read an article about Starbuck's bungled Gwangju promo in Korea. I'm betting that inspired this post, but if not, look it up, it's a great example.
The timing of the post was a coincidence (the actual inspiration is in a separate comment), but this is indeed a great example of the title. I just read up on this incident, and oof…😬
🤦♀️
That shitty PSA Ajit Pai made when he helped kill Net Neutrality during his time on the FCC.
I have one I still remember 20 years later. Although the stupid decision wasn't made by the company buying an ad, but where the newspaper placed it.
A newspaper placed an ad by eon how they "securing tomorrow's gas today" under an article about an exhibition of the fate of Sinti people in Nazi Germany (the fate was Auschwitz).
😨😨
the "don't hire people" ones
constant bombardment of AI this or that tech, business ads.
Decades ago, Coca-Cola was trying to enter the market in Saudi Arabia. They ran an ad where "pilgrims" walked around a giant coke bottle, in the same way that Muslim pilgrims in Mecca walk around the Kaaba during Hajj and Umrah. It was very, very poorly received, to say the least, and many attribute it as the main reason why Pepsi has dominated the market instead of Coca-Cola.
How deliciously blasphemous. Makes me almost want to drink a Coke. Almost.
I believe Starbucks right now in Korea wins something with stupidity
Came here looking for this. Insane that someone thought of it, someone agreed with it, and someone approved it.
This is insane 😂
I once saw a billboard that only had text and a picture of some guy.
The text read "You can't block this ad"
It made me so irrationally angry and I still to this day don't even know what they were advertising for.
I'd guess it would be the owner of the billboard advertising the space. I've definitely seen that before, often accompanied by a "x thousand people see this every day!" type message.
Advertising advertising is one of the most hilarious things to me.
I hate ads on principle but an ad for an ad is just a level of debauchery I can barely fathom
You looked! See!? Bench ads work!
Ooh, I saw something like that once. What they haven't considered is that you could just cover it up. Hey presto, blocked.
Ooh, I saw something like that once. What they haven't considered is that you could just cover it up. Hey presto, blocked.
IMO, the easiest answer is always gonna be literally any pro genAI ads, so I'mma go with something different.
I don't remember the brand, but it was this car ad where someone sealed themselves in their car in their garage and was doing the thing where you set it up so the emission fumes backfire into the vehicle and you commit suicide that way. The ad basically boiled down to how their car was so clean you couldn't kill yourself off the emission fumes and shit.
I really hope anyone involved with it and/or approved it were either fired and/or had to take some sensitivity course because suicide is something you should never joke about.
There was a partnership between a genealogy group and a cruise line. It makes sense that the people who like one would like the other. The cruise line put out an ad “sail the Atlantic and trace your family” Which is kind of tone deaf for a number of people.
Great learning opportunity if you chain them below decks the entire time.
Oh that's funny, I thought this was a joke about the Titanic..... Probably because I pictured it going from Europe to the US.
That sounds right up Boomer alley
How convenient!
Another one near me, not technically an ad but a name: The Dead River Company. They deliver oil.
Rugs a million having a closing down sale for over 20 years.
It's been 20 years. You clearly aren't closing.
There's a furniture store near me that's always going out of business and having closing sales (at least for the last few decades). But the name on the store always seems to change every year. I'm wondering if it's just the same owners that shut the business down and rotate out names every now and then.
I guess that's one way to get out of fulfilling warranties?
There's a lot of those. There was one near me that did the same thing (maybe still does, I have looked in a while).
Just for you
Needs to be more high tempo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCDkHhbbGO4
Oh dammit, I need a new rug but I saw this commercial 2 weeks ago so they're definitely closed for good already. Guess I'll find another shop!
There is a carpet shop having "final sales" or "closing sales" in the next town since I started reading newspapers 50 years ago. The carpet shop survived the newspaper. And it is still having "final sales".
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/911-mattress-ad-controversy
This ad honestly reads like satire. I can't believe this came out of Texas.
Wow, it gets worse the more you read!
Much like current events in that way 🫤
Was in a flyer I got years ago.
No way. Just...no way. Definitely not in a litigous society like the USA. The liability alone would be insane.
Nope not USA. But incredibly stupid regardless. "The clean team"? Like what? Haha.
Funnily enough the hotel we're staying at has a vending machine with candy and snacks. And also sells Tide detergent in a pack that looks like a box of candy. I'll get a picture next time I walk by.
Hah!
Although I could see having snacks to fill out the extra spaces in a laundry-products vending machine by the washers.
Actually, just the Tide in a vending machine of snacks.
Wow. Looks like a retro candy box haha.
Yeah that's cray
Peggy, that's the recipe for mustard gas!
Almost. It will do the same thing though. More or less.
?
Mixing produces a toxic gas
https://doh.wa.gov/community-and-environment/contaminants/bleach-mixing-dangers
I spent a lot more effort learning French than chemistry. Whew!
Other way around for me. But if you want an omelette du fromage, I got you covered.
How many days off work can I get with those symptoms?
If you inhale enough, all of them. But you'd either be dead or very not well off. But more likely dead.
Given the English/French in both the packaging and the ad, this is probably Canada?
Yep. Canadian Tire haha.
Amazon Climate Pledge Arena
after they fired the two women who organized the internal protest campaign to pressure Amazon leadership to make a pledge to improve their climate impact
Every time the self checkout prompts me to donate to charity.
Sir this is a Loblaws, why don't you donate.
(They've jacked the cost from "round up to the nearest dollar" to like $4.95 for some reason too)
That one Pepsi ad where there is a protest and a woman gives a cop a pepsi so they're all friends now. This was around the time of the first Trump admin and BLM protests.
I once saw a billboard that said somethimg like: if ads for cigarettes are gonna be illegal, it's not gonna be long and you won't see an ad of a sausage anymore.
Like i saw that and was like: good
Who is driving by that and foaming out of their mouth: NOT MY SAUSAGE!
I remember driving around Germany and seeing ads with really exuberant people eating sausages with slogans like "Fleisch! Na ja!"
So I'm going to say: the Germans.
Meat-eating and patriarchy are tightly linked.
Explain, please.
I'm not a scholar on this point, but my main inspiration is how unhinged and offended people are about vegetarianism, which implies there's something deeper at play than a personal preference.
I think an approximate thumbnail would be that it implicitly challenges a hierarchy where some beings are so superior as to farm and eat other beings, one step away from being able to enslave others, two steps away from being able to subjugate them (the core of any hiearchical system).
I've got no particular dog in the fight, being a meat eater myself.
I'm no David Graeber, but it doesn't sound like "tightly linked" applies here based on your inspired, approximate thumbnail.
https://reclamationmagazine.com/2023/01/08/how-the-culture-of-eating-meat-links-to-patriarchal-masculinity/
How the culture of eating meat links to patriarchal masculinity
Food is political. It can bring communities together. It can also shape different aspects of our identities, often with or without our conscious knowing. In my community, particularly with the men who are ex-Gurkhas or in service, there is a culture of cooking meat outside on an open fire and eating it together. Picture a plate of meat cooked with fragrant Nepali spices on one hand, and a beer on the other hand. Back home, slaughtering animals for food is usually a man’s job. This is the same at the butcher’s. Out of my family members, my father is the biggest meat eater. Witnessing these moments, I asked myself — why is eating meat a more ‘masculine’ thing?
In the West, we live in a culture of eating meat. From stocked-up supermarket shelves to its overall availability in restaurants and social places — eating meat is normalised. Meat is not a sentient being, an animal — meat is a product to be sold. According to numerous studies, meat is gendered. Meat consumption is relatively higher among men than women in most continents around the world. I believe deep-ingrained societal attitudes and beliefs still linger and perpetuate a positive perception of meat, influenced by language and social meaning-making. For instance, eating meat is ‘normal’, ‘tasty’, and ‘highly preferred’. Meat dishes form a part of many traditional meals in different cultures and as meat is relatively deemed more expensive, it can be seen as a ‘valued’ food culturally. More importantly, eating meat is implicitly linked to positive qualities that are often traditionally masculine. For example, eating meat makes you “strong”, “big”, and “healthy” are terms I repeatedly heard from my parents and other adults when I was younger. Further, meat protein is conventionally associated with building muscle, reinforcing meat consumption with traditionally masculine traits of being and looking physically strong. However, a healthy plant-based lifestyle is nutritionally adequate and includes enough protein, minus the high cholesterol and fat content as well as the health risks of a diet heavy in red and processed meats. The rhetoric that ‘meat is essential’ is now changing, especially as more people are becoming aware of the true cost of meat on animals, people, and the planet.
According to research by the University of Hawaii, men eat more meat if their masculinity has been threatened. How men eat more meat to be perceived as ‘manly’ not only tells us how men form closeness between one another through eating meat, but it also strongly ties to patriarchal thinking — the misperception that eating meat makes you a ‘man’ and social pressure from society, or other men, for men ‘to be like a man’. The link between masculine socialisation and eating meat is clear and influenced by political systems that dictate our society on a wider scale. We live under the patriarchy. In The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love, bell hooks defines it as a ‘political system that shapes and informs male identity’. bell hooks states patriarchal masculinity is the dominant form of masculinity in modern society. Elements of masculinity become manipulated by patriarchal masculinity. This informs and creates toxic masculinity — ‘unhealthy elements of socially-constructed ideas of masculinity’ that center on traditionally masculine traits, attitudes, and male dominance at the expense of women. Patriarchal masculinity is made possible therefore by devaluing the feminine. Since eating meat is linked with positive qualities associated with traditionally masculine traits, plant-based foods are often seen as a more feminine choice. Then, to oppose meat suggests being viewed as ‘feminine’, the opposite of ‘manly’ — femininity is perceived as inferior through a patriarchal masculine lens. The masculine socialisation of meat suggests why men eat more meat than women in general, but it is also seeped in misogynistic cultural meanings beyond food choice. Patriarchal masculinity is fragile and does not want to be associated with femininity, hence its connection to meat directly goes against the ethic of care which links to a vegetarian or vegan diet and traditionally feminine traits of empathy and compassion. This further suggests why men are less likely to go plant-based because a meatless diet goes against the hyper-masculine social attributes of being a ‘man’. Feminist scholar Carol Adams in The Sexual Politics of Meat argues that men eat meat in order to be ‘masculine and virile’ and through her years of research, investigates the relationship between misogyny and meat in greater detail.
On the other hand, the media has especially played a huge role in creating the cultural symbol of meat as traditionally masculine. This is often done by playing on gender stereotypes such as masculinity tropes and the objectification of women which uphold sexist associations and the gender binary with meat consumption. However, the rhetoric is changing. A new study on consumption trends in the UK by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) reveals that plant-based products are on the rise in the UK, and more people, particularly younger people are going plant-based. Women were also more likely to go plant-based than men. Media outlets like The Guardian are helping raise awareness about the meat industry’s negative environmental impacts in modern society and documentaries such as Game Changers are challenging the ‘meat is masculine’ myth by featuring former successful athletes such as former bodybuilder, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Plant-based products such as Beyond Meat feature plant-based professional athletes, both male and female, as brand ambassadors which shifts the perspective we need meat to be strong and encourages a positive, gender-neutral perception of plant-based eating.
The culture of eating meat links to distorted perceptions of masculinity influenced by the political system of patriarchy that exists in modern Western society. Beyond taste and personal preference, conditioned social and cultural beliefs, tradition, and the power of marketing shape socio-cultural meanings and can implicitly influence our food choices. How meat is tied to closed perceptions of what masculinity stands for can be shifted by challenging patriarchal masculinity itself. The patriarchal social expectations of being a ‘man’ are limited and fuels both misogynistic and pressurising ideals and beliefs. Considering an ethic of compassion and care in our food choices and questioning the conventional and often harmful perceptions of what it means to be a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ can shift our presumptions and food choices for the better.
That I will buy. Your first comment should have started there IMO.
I'm still not sure I would call it tightly linked, but there's a reasonable argument to be made, which I say as another meat-eating dude.
It's more clearly observable in any debate on the topic and how vegetarianism is used as political cudgel. Just keep your ears open.
And “Lisa the Vegetarian” is actually next on my Simpsons watchthrough.
NVidia recently:
"... Like how everyone has a home cinema."
"The 2070 is too old! Buy a new GPU, I need the money."
Ending driver support for the 1080 still makes me angry. It is a perfectly fine and powerful card but they just ended support on Linux and in cuda.
Me, glancing over at 1660 Super...
Spaghetti-ohs twitting: Take a moment to think of pearl harbor with their O-shaped mascot holding an american flag. I'm not american, neither have I ever tried Spaghetti-ohs until today I say Oh-oh-Spaghetti-ohs when something bad is gonna happen as it was one of the first interenet controversies I was interrsted enough to follow.
Also a newer one: Heidi Klum and her daughter & Mom all lingerie commercial for intimissimi. It kinda missed the mark beucause all 3 tried to look very seductive, but how it was shot it make it look very homoerotical, which is wierd because you got a grandma, a mum and a daughter trying to seduce each other...
"It's all about good jeans." - Sydney Sweeny
Do not share advertising. Mocking is sharing, not stopping. The only attention we need tp pay to advertising is blocking its presentation and banning its production.
What's crazy is I see far less (near zero) advertising than when I was younger.
That's the one nice thing about the current internet I guess.
Back in the day it was newspapers, tv, billboards, radio, flyers, theatres, and so on. Now it's nothing.
The old Apple ads in the UK that had Mitchell and Webb, where Webb was the 'I'm a PC' nerd. If I wanted a computer, I'd sooner have one like Mark Corrigan than Jez.
Why limit yourself to just those two options anyway, when there's a car superior one out there that oozes freedom.
I run Super Hans, btw.
I was abroad recently. At the radio I got an ad for a company from my country. At the end of the ad, they said their slogan... in their own language. How do you expect people to get your slogan if it's in a language they don't speak!?
Slogans in foreign languages are sometimes considered prestigious or exotic. They're saying it for the vibes, not for the literal meaning of the words.
Rock and Roll Hairstyle USA
Wow, really? I'd never heard a slogan in a foreign language before. It must vary by country
Volkswagen had "Fahrvergnügen" in the early 90s. I can remember that campaign took off for a while.
Fun fact: That word didn't exist in the German language before, it was created specifically for this ad.
"Vorsprung durch Technik" - not sure of the spelling, but it's a slogan from an ad for a German car in the UK. Mercedes maybe?
I remember a good take on it! An ad in one of Nordic languages where a happy family sings to a metal or punk(?) radio tune which refrain went "I want to f*** you in your ***".
It was an ad to promote learning foreign languages.
Your country doesn't speak English, by chance?
No no of course not xD
This ad which was greenlit by Scott Morrison, who at the time was just some gronk in advertising.
Despite the ad causing a sharp decline in tourism he somehow fell upward and ended up Prime Minister of Australia.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-ZLr9ePuj8
Being PM didn't keep his foot out of his mouth, did it?
This billboard that, translated from French, essentially says "same traffic, no more gas", on the bridge to Montréal, which has loads of other transportation options where you wouldn't get stuck in traffic.
I'm from the US and live in the suburbs, so public transportation is nearly non existent around me.
Visited Montreal a couple years ago for the solar eclipse, took Amtrak up from New York (technically it would have been a little faster to drive but not by a whole lot.)
And then once we were there, I felt absolutely no need for a car. The subway and a short walk got us everywhere we wanted to go, and we never found ourselves waiting around long for the next train. We didn't end up needing to take one but we saw plenty of buses around too.
And the bike lanes- actual protected bike lanes! They even had little plows clearing the bike lanes when we got a bit of snow while we were there. I could actually see myself choosing to get around on a bike if I lived there, there aren't many parts of the city or suburbs where I live where I'd feel safe to commute on a bike.
I spent a week there, and even with probably some extra traffic from eclipse tourists I felt that there was never much traffic in any part of the city we visited and we got around a lot.
And with RESO you can cover a lot of ground downtown on foot and barely need to step outside.
I haven't traveled abroad much, I'm sure there's other cities in the world that have all that and more, but it definitely blew my mind as an American.
I'm not usually much of a city person, but I could absolutely see myself living in Montreal. If I thought my dog could adjust to city life well and I spoke at least passable French, I might have considered relocating. It's probably the only city I've visited so far (again, not that I've traveled much) that I really look forward to visiting again someday.
If you're in the northeastern US looking for a vacation, get to new York, take the train to Montreal, and just experience it for week. Open your eyes to what we're missing out on.
And not for nothing, all of the food I had while I was there was absolutely amazing. It's worth it just for that.
That grubhub cgi one with the fat assed people dancing.
https://youtu.be/X6tT_PMnEbU
That Fortnight ad where they redid Apple's 1984-style ad, basically saying what a grave miscarriage of justice it was that Apple got too much money from their game, and Epic didn't get quite as much of their billions of dollars as they would've liked.
...At the height of the BLM protests...
Anything related to AI nowadays
or the peddling AI detection software, by using AI.
The Lorax movie tie-in ads
SNL made a sketch about it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn8pwoNWseM
Really strange Applebee's ad during news coverage about war in Ukraine, ad at roughly 0:27 - https://www.mediaite.com/media/tv/applebees-apologizes-pulls-ads-after-cnn-plays-annoying-commercial-during-invasion-of-ukraine/
Oh boy I hope that’s not the Chicken Fried inciden—okay yep it’s the Chicken Fried incident
i can only pick one?
twizzlers and lawn care ads have been leaning heavy on AI slop and the lack of good writing and ideas is really showing lately. none of it is remotely cohesive.
I'm not sure if this applies. Yesterday, in Canada, I saw a commercial for a cellphone network provider company that showed a bunch of their logos dot across Canada on a globe map and they said "anywhere in Canada" and then the globe spun around as far away from the usa as possible and they said "or anywhere in the world". I thought that was a very subtle diss against the usa. Sometimes I see Jesus on burnt toast though so maybe I'm reading something that's not there.
How is that tone deaf?
Now I'm sure it doesn't apply. Thx.