As a business owner, you know that your company’s advertising strategy is extremely important. But when it comes to advertising campaigns, too often big businesses either try to get too creative (and it ends up as a total disaster), or those in charge of the advertising just get lazy and allow potentially harmful ads to reach the public.
So while advertising is an essential part of your business’s success, there are so many ways it can go wrong.
Here are a few examples of how advertising mishaps ended up costing companies millions of dollars in lawsuits and a major decrease in brand popularity.
- Celeb Boutique’s Twitter Post — Immediately following the Aurora, Colorado shooting, the hashtag, #Aurora began trending on Twitter. Millions of people used the hashtag to mourn for the people of the deadly tragedy, but Celeb Boutique, although unaware of why it was trending, used the hashtag to promote their Aurora dress product. This sparked a major Twitter controversy, with many angry users boycotting the company.
Unfortunately, this is just one of many, many examples of corporate social media profiles using a tragedy to their disadvantage.
- Macy’s False Advertising — Another small online mistake that ended up angering many customers was Macy’s notorious necklace debacle. Macy’s tried advertising their usually $1,500 necklace for $479. The only problem: they forgot a digit. The advertisement went out with a listing price of only $47, leading to the necklace selling out immediately. Macy’s had to cancel all the orders and angered many customers in the process.
- McDonald’s Billboard Mistake — This advertising mistake shows that even little spelling mistakes can shine a horrible light on your brand. Today, if your company posts one mistake on an ad in the smallest town in America, someone can take a picture of it and share it with the world. That’s kind of what happened with this McDonald’s billboard. Attempting to advertise their “Angus Burger,” they forgot the “g” in angus…
Clearly, simple mistakes made by part-time employees or social media interns , as well as huge mistakes made by big-time advertising executives, can tarnish a company’s brand in a matter of minutes. That’s why it’s extremely important, no matter what size company you are running, that you double, triple and quadruple check your ad before it reaches the public.
One cost-effective form of advertising available to your business is aerial billboards. Airplane banner advertising companies have been flying aerial billboards since the early 1920s and continue to this day. These aerial ads have to be grammatically correct, not offensive, and truthful just like any other form of advertising. But if you’re careful with your aerial advertising, you can reach hundreds of thousands of potential clients at a relatively low cost.
One of the best reasons aerial billboards are so effective is their response rate, which is up to 20% for some aerial ads. In a survey of customers who witnessed these sky advertisements, 79% could remember what was being advertised and 67% could retain at least half of the entire message. Not too many other mediums have enjoyed that much success.
Be careful with your advertising, it can ruin the brand you’ve spent so long building.