Marketing disasters: Westpac’s monkey business tops 2009 list
It’s been a big year of marketing disasters for some unfortunate brands, with Westpac taking the mantle as the biggest loser in Mumbrella’s top ten list of the year’s Biggest Marketing Disasters, thanks to its patronising comparison of the price of bananas to its hike in interest rates.
Top 10 marketing disasters for 2009:
- Westpac – Banana smoothies
- Toyota Yaris – Clean Getaways
- Kraft – Vegemite iSnack 2.0
- Telstra admin charge to pay your phone bill
- Tiger Woods
- Witchery – Girl with the jacket
- Tourism Queensland – Fake tattoo
- Kyle & Jackie O
- Australian tourism – attacks on Indian students
- Coca Cola Kerry Armstrong/ Myth busting
The bank created an internal video to help staff understand the changes in the economic environment as a consequence of the global financial crisis. It seemed a simple and straight forward enough idea.
But then someone internally made that now fateful decision to send the video out in an email to customers. It shortly followed the bank’s move to lift its standard variable mortgage rate by 45 basis points – nearly double the Reserve Bank’s 25-basis-point increase.
What ensued was such a widespread backlash that it extended beyond its customers to the wider Australian community.
The video was lambasted for being “condescending”, as it compared its interest rate hike with the rise in price of banana smoothies. Even Prime Minister Kevin Rudd weighed in on the debate, telling ABC Radio in Townsville “I think Westpac should have a long hard look at itself”.
It was subsequently forced to take the video down from its website.
The bank took the number one spot as Mumbrella’s Biggest Marketing Disaster of the Year because of the sheer number of Australians it managed to antagonise, patronise, alienate – take your pick – in the midst of the GFC.
2. Toyota Yaris – Clean Getaways
Toyota came a close second following the global attention it attracted – for all the wrong reasons – from a video promoting the Yaris, as part of its social media pitch.
The offensive video, ‘Clean Getaways’, was produced for the Clever Film Competition, run by Saatchi & Saatchi, as part of its submission for the Yaris pitch. It was one of five agency campaigns all vying to win the social media account.
But it all came unstuck when as more and more people started to view the video, it was deemed sexist, smutty and highly offensive.
It attracted so much commentary it even hit the headlines in the US and UK.
It has now been pulled from the competition and Toyota is reviewing the processes for “signing off any sort of information that goes into the public domain which includes the marketing department”.
A decision on the social media pitch is still pending.
Who could forget Kraft’s ill-fated attempt to get the public to decide on the new name for its Vegemite spin-off, iSnack 2.0, or should we say Cheesybite.
The company was forced to go back to the drawing board following the widespread derision it received at the iSnack 2.0 name, chosen from a public competition in which over 48,000 suggestions were received.
It then launched a second call out, asking the public to vote from seven options: Cheesybite, Creamymate, Smooth, Snackmate, Vegemate, Vegemild or none of these.
After all that, the new, new name was Cheesybite.
Though following further prodding, Mumbrella found out that the number of people who voted for the name Cheesybite, which was over 10,000, was only marginally ahead of the number of people who didn’t like any of the names at all.
4.Telstra admin charge to pay your phone bill
The telco was forced to ditch its controversial $2.20 admin fee it slugged people paying their bills over the counter or by mail after it was flooded with complaints from customers.
Less than two months after it was introduced Telstra’s CEO, David Thodey, was forced to concede: “It is now clear to me that introducing this fee across our existing plans was the wrong way to encourage customers to move to electronic payments.”
Telstra also took the decision to refund all customers that had been forced to make the payment.
5. Tiger Woods
No one has fallen from grace quite as dramatically and as quickly as golfing legend Tiger Woods, as more and more women stepped forward alleging they had slept with the married father of two.
It was only time before his long list of sponsors would start to fall like dominos. Brands which are now severing commercial ties with Woods include Accenture, Tag Heuer, Gillette, PepsiCo.
Nike seems to be one of the very few taking the view that Tiger’s extramarital activities won’t hurt his career in the long run.
6. Witchery – Girl with the jacket
A weekend news story in The Sydney Morning Herald about a girl, named Heidi Clarke, wanting to find the man who had left his jacket in a cafe was initially dubbed a modern Cinderella tale.
That is until it was exposed as a hoax, crafted by strategy agency Naked on behalf of client Witchery.
Clarke even had a website, Hotmail address and YouTube video in which she spent much time extolling the virtues of the “really nice” jacket with its “beautiful silk lining”.
That’s when suspicions started to raise that it was a publicity stunt inspired by a similar, genuine story a year ago in the US.
Witchery was forced to come clean to the hoax, but Naked has maintained that it was a big success for the client.
7. Tourism Queensland – Fake tattoo
Tourism Queensland’s Best Job in the World campaign proved to be the most acclaimed creative work of the year.
But it almost came unstuck when the video of a girl getting a tattoo in order to win a job looking after the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef was exposed as a fake after fooling news organisations around the world.
The video appeared on a number of websites globally, as well as Tourism Queensland’s own site for the launch of the campaign. But Mumbrella revealed that the woman, Rhiannon Craig, was a digital project manager at Cummins Nitro (now known as Sapient Nitro) in Brisbane, the agency behind the campaign.
After the mainstream media picked up the story from Mumbrella, the video was taken off YouTube. While the Queensland treasurer Andrew Fraser said he took a “dim view” of the affair, Tourism Queensland CEO Anthony Hayes said: “The simple answer is that we messed up”.
In July, 2Day FM’s breakfast show hosts Kyle & Jackie O were suspended following a disastrous live broadcast when a 14-year-old girl taking part in a lie detector test revealed that she had been raped.
Everyone had something to say about the incident, with advertiser Optus going public saying it was “appalled”, while Naked Communications boss Adam Ferrier wrote an open letter to the industry calling for a boycott of the station.
Presenter Kyle Sandilands for his part penned a justification of the incident in which he suggested that some of the blame lay with the media coverage that followed.
But it didn’t end there. In September Sandilands then made offensive comments on his show about comedian Magda Szubanski losing weight in a concentration camp, which led to a second suspension.
He was sacked from his role as a judge on Australian Idol following the rape scandal, but there is now speculation that ‘the man with nine lives’ may soon return.
9. Australian tourism – attacks on Indian students
Attacks on foreign students and escalating racial tension sparked concerns of a PR disaster for Australia’s inbound tourism industry and the burgeoning international student market.
The Indian prime minister even had a word with Kevin Rudd, concerned over a spate of attacks on Indian students in Melbourne.
Attacks on Indian students in western Sydney’s Harris Park also led to protests involving 200 Indian nationals.
And when the Indian Government asked Australian Ambassador in New Delhi John McCarthy to explain what was going on, he could only say: “I have not seen the evidence that they (the attacks) were racist, but I wasn’t there, I wouldn’t discount it.”
10. Coca Cola Kerry Armstrong/ Myth busting
Coca Cola was forced to release “setting the record straight” press ads clarifying the points made in an ad campaign stating it was a myth that Coke made people fat, rotted their teeth and contained a high level of caffeine.
But the ads, fronted by Australian actress Kerry Armstrong, gained the ire of the anti-junk food lobby. The Australian Dental Association, the Parents Jury and the Obesity Policy Coalition put their complaints forward to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission which found Coke to be in breach of the Trade Practices Act.
The soft drinks giant was then forced to release corrective advertising.
It also needs to be noted that prior to the ACCC’s involvement, the Advertising Standards Bureau found nothing wrong with the ad. It wasn’t until the ACCC stepped in that the situation changed. It beggars the question then, is it time to stop pretending that advertising is still self-regulated?
Camille Alarcon
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Not convinced that Westpac’s was worse then Kraft’s Vegemite iSnack 2.0
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Where’s Witchery? The list needs to go to 11.
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oh I just saw it. Was too busy looking for the man.
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Do you notice they are almost chronological – going backwards. I think this shows that the trend it to be outraged then very quickly move on to the next thing. Who would have thought 2 months ago that i-snack would not top the list?
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iSnack was robbed…
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Show me the sales data on:
– Vegemite
– iSnack 2.0 against the target audience
Vegemite may have poorly managed a PR disaster but I want to see some FMCG numbers first. I think when we see the incremental increase of sales on Vegemite we may forgive our 2.0 friend.
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2009 is going to go down as a classic year for brands behaving badly. And what rich case studies these are going to provide for all those aspiring marketers looking to learn how not to manage a brand.
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Westpac’s wasn’t a marketing disaster. What it was was an example of a PM who should stick to doing his job rather than trying to ride every populist bandwagon that passes. (If he wanted to actually do something about it rather than leap aboard the passing bandwagon, he could easily have raised his existing party policy for making mortgages as portable as mobile phone numbers. But no, much easier to go for the quick sound bite and achieve absolutely nothing!)
Vegemite’s fiasco was by far the worst of the year. To launch a product at halftime in the AFL grand final and have the net go ballistic with criticism before anyone won the flag is an achievement beyond anything any marketer has managed in the nation’s history.
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Fabulous list.
Big brands making big mistakes, which could easily have been avoided big time.
The list could include Cadbury making its chocolate bar smaller and substituting ingredients… Jeopardising a ridiculously high market share
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Surely the Velocity gold card upgrade e-mail deserves a mention in the fail awards.
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Sure, they’re all “errors in judgement”, but I reckon that when those “errors” are deliberate attempts to dupe an audience, they deserve more disaster points.
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Does anyone involved with this blog have even the faintest idea of what marketing is? Kraft/Vegemite has SMASHED it this year. something like one in 5 households has a jar of iSnack2.0 in the fridge. A few self-appointed “experts” have branded it a failure. Hmmm…..what should I look to for information….sales data or the opinion of some online pundit who has a blog with the word “marketing” mispelled in it.
I have never seen so many people who think they know so much and actually know so little talk so much rubbish about a single topic.
And they’re STILL talking about it. And buying it in huge quantities. And coming back to Vegemite in huge quantities as well. Suckers.
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@RexD – well put!
Where’s the list of brands that took no risks in 2009? I barely watch TV these days, so I can’t tell you whether my brand affinity has changed for the traditional big names, but what I can say for sure is that a brand that takes a risk, is a brand that is hungry. And a brand that is hungry tends to be at the top of my mind.
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@Rex D
Do you think it might be pertinent to look at the product over a longer term?
Would there be… isnack2.0 or whatever it is called now… in 20% of household’s fridges if it was called something else? I suspect that any new vegemite product would get a trial from consumers, given how popular the original is. But how many times after that would they buy it?
Isn’t this supposed to be about building brands, not controversy?
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Wow the hierarchy of this list really does show how quickly stuff gets forgotten. I-Snack should have been the winner here mainly because it caused every viewer of the AFL Grand Final to comment on how stupid it was. Watch Chris Brown’s star rise again to see how quickly people forget and this article on Cracked really shows what the public are willing to forgive
http://www.cracked.com/article.....-they-did/
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O.f.f.s Isnack was clearly a stunt planned well in advance, I can’t believe how gullible the mainstream media are.
It reminds me of when a donut chain opened recently in Melbourne, they offered free packs of donuts to people, which naturally caused a crush of people at the shopping centre, the media went on and on about how people were ‘stampeding’ the store, but none of them mentioned the obvious fact they were giving their product away free, thus causing the stampede.
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