When ads go bad: Burger King UK’s Women’s Day tweet, the Kendall Jenner Pepsi furore, Donald Trump’s Macy’s mayhem and 3 more sensitivity scandals that shocked us
- Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi ad appeared to exploit protests like #BlackLivesMatter while KitchenAid tweeted a joke about Barack Obama’s dead grandmother
- Victoria’s Secret’s ‘The Perfect Body’ tagline was criticised for body shaming while a Bloomingdales’ ad seemed to condone date rape
A recent tweet from Burger King UK that read “women belong in the kitchen” on International Women’s Day unsurprisingly left a bad taste in the mouth of social media users.
The tweet was part of a campaign intended to promote the chain’s launch of an initiative to help increase the number of female head chefs in restaurants. But the initial tweet, which was part of a larger thread, was met with anger and confusion from thousands of social media users, with some describing it as tone-deaf.
As anger mounted, the chain said it was a “mistake” to not include the entirety of the initiative in its first tweet. It later apologised in a follow-up tweet, saying: “We hear you. We got our initial tweet wrong and we’re sorry.”
Read on for other examples of brand campaigns that went off the boil.
Pepsi
