I recently profiled a number of products that were decidedly conjured up in hell. This week’s subject—dumb promotional and advertising campaigns—is no less frightening; in fact, one could posit that these examples illustrate why none of us should ever feel intimidated by anyone, for stupidity and outrageous behavior have been with us for a very long time. Nonetheless, here we go.

I begin our tour with an “ingenious” promotional campaign created for the hit TV show, Miami Vice. The year was 1985. MCA Records Canada was sending the show’s soundtrack to reviewers all over the country. Along with the record was a special surprise—a little bag of white powder. Some of the recipients thought the powder was cocaine. It wasn’t. It was sugar, which probably meant that a lot of reviewers must’ve looked pretty stupid as they tried to snort the stuff. From a public relations standpoint, MCA rightfully got hammered.

In the superlative book, "The Misfortune 500," by Bruce Nash and Allan Zullo, the authors point out that a top MCA executive had a different reaction to the PR backfire when he said, “Normally our promotions staff wouldn’t have been that creative.” In fact, the same executive said that the campaign was not meant to promote drug use…okay?

One of my favorite promotions concerned United Airline’s “Fly Your Wife Free” campaign, in which businessmen were told their wives could come along for free. There was only one slight problem, however. As Nash and Zullo write, “When businessmen took advantage of the promotion, United sent letters of appreciation to their spouses. Soon the airline was inundated with angry letters from outraged wives who said they had never been off the ground and demanded to know the names of their high-flying husbands’ companions.” Now there’s a campaign that should never have left the tarmac.

In a similar vein, in 1967, Pacific Air lines, a small but up-and-coming commuter airline, decided (with the CEO’s blessing) to address the hidden fear of flying that quite a few of us have. Stan Freberg, an L.A.-based comedian, was hired to create a campaign for PAL that would make light of in-flight terror. His campaign included full-page ads in both Los Angeles and New York papers. One such ad read, “Hey there! You with the sweat in your palms. It’s about time an airline faced up to something: most people are scared witless of flying. Deep down inside, every time that big plane lifts off the runway, you wonder if this is it, right? You want to know something, fella? So does the pilot deep down inside.”

Incredibly, as the authors point out, the airline didn’t stop there. The flight attendants gave each passenger a “fortune cookie that contained the message, ‘It could be worse. The pilot could be whistling ‘The High and the Mighty.’”

Needless to say, the campaign caused an uproar in the entire industry. Airline executives from the major carriers were practically screaming for an end to the madness—people, they thought, might actually be scared away. Unbelievably, PAL’s chairman laughed off the criticism, saying, “Lots of people are terrified of flying and we thought it was time somebody cleared the air.” The result. Within two months the airline was out of business. Perhaps their message lacked directness?

In the history of advertising, however, one of the most offensive (and sexist) campaigns that ever ran was the 1969 TV spot for Lever Brother’s Hero laundry detergent. Picture this: A horde of moaning and writhing housewives are gathered around a twenty-five-foot-tall box of soap. As the women get more excited, the deep male voice says, “I, Hero, am here. I am the strong detergent with the yet-unheard-of power…I clean with strength…Your hands will feel the soft.” At this point, the women are in a frenzied state, jumping up and down, their hands clawing the mountainous box. They respond, saying, “I wanna Hero kind of clean. I wanna strong yet softer clean. I wanna see it. I wanna feel it. Want my eyes to see the clean. Want my hands to feel the soft.”

What more can I say, folks…I couldn’t make this up even if I wanted to.

Stephen Bainton is CEO of Mr. Marketing, Inc. and can be reached at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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