Comments on: Who Approved That? 7 Food Promotions Gone Horribly Wrong

By: Mr. Briggs

Mr. Briggs — Sun, 30 May 2010 11:48:12 +0000

@dangermouse: So did Hell Pizza hand out Trojans as well? (wide smirk)

By: gus

gus — Tue, 18 May 2010 00:21:09 +0000

@ Nathan, WILD turkeys can fly. But, however, not domestic turkeys. I don’t know if turkeys need to be on something solid to take off.

By: bakedpotatoes

bakedpotatoes — Mon, 17 May 2010 21:09:19 +0000

McAfrika.

Yeah, because OF COURSE it’s a jab at all the starving people. If the recipe is from Africa, what should the call it?

McRecipefromthecontinentunderthemediterranean?

By: Nathan

Nathan — Mon, 17 May 2010 15:27:03 +0000

Turkeys can fly.

By: PEPSI 349

PEPSI 349 — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:51:02 +0000

For more info about the PEPSI 349 FIASCO. Pls. visit our website http://www.pepsi349.com . Thanks & God bless!

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 09 May 2009 18:40:00 +0000

Well the KFC/Oprah grilled chicken fiasco has to take the cake when it comes to promotion fiascoes… if the riots in NYC were any indication.

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:46:00 +0000

What about Absolut Vodka’s “In An Absolut World” campaign in Mexico last year? They sure took some heat over that one…

By: Lee451

Lee451 — Wed, 06 May 2009 01:39:00 +0000

I recall back in the late 1980′s the 7 UP company offered a free mini basketball if you got a bottle cap with a certain symbol in it (I think it was “Spot”, the red dot logo). I was a major consumer of 7 UP at the time (mixed with bourbon) and won something like 25 or 30 mini basketballs. Evidently, a lot of other people did as well because they stopped the promo and sent me (and a lot of oter people, I am sure) a $1 off coupon. I was annoyed, to say the least.

/I now drink Sprite with my bourbon.

By: Ambrose

Ambrose — Tue, 05 May 2009 17:37:00 +0000

I contracted with a promotional company that did the game cards for a Monday Night Football promotion back in the 90s. It was one of those “watch the game and if your ticket number is announced, you win a new Dodge Durango”. Well, these tickets also had scratch prizes and one of the prizes was a pair of tickets to a Busch Series race, of which we had 100 pairs. The promotional company did some reverse algorithm to predict how many of the tickets would be distributed, how many would get scratched and came out to how many needed to be “winners” for the Busch tickets for us to give out all 100 pairs. What the dumbasses didn’t do was shuffle the game pieces, so stacks of consecutive Busch ticket winners were going to a multi location fast food restaurant that has golden arches. Since it was not a golden arch specific promotion that required purchase, the minimum wage workers that worked at the franchises just placed stacks of the game pieces on the counter.

The result: over 300 people claimed to be winners of the race tickets. There would have been more, but several were the same people sending in multiple winners in one envelope, which fortunately was a violation of the rules OR we’d have had over 750 winners (1,500 tickets). The race track FREAKED OUT when they heard this, refusing to give us more than the 200 tickets they had allotted. Luckily, they offered to sell us the additional 400+ tickets we did need at a 50% discounted rate.

By: Gordon Daily

Gordon Daily — Mon, 04 May 2009 18:31:00 +0000

The Hoover company (yes, the vacuum cleaner maker) back in 1992 made an ENORMOUS blunder. It gave away two free round-trip tickets to anywhere in Europe with the purchase of a Hoover vacuum priced greater than Â£100.

This error cost Hoover (and its parent company at the time Maytag) Â£50 million.