The Biggest Marketing Missteps By Advertising Masterminds

It is not true to say that branding is something done in a vacuum. A marketing agency will look at what resonates with an audience within a particular industry sector during any given time, and design campaigns with that context in mind.

However, whilst it is true that a lot of branding builds on the past, it does not necessarily mean that companies cannot turn around their brand perception with a single campaign, either through an incredibly strong message, interesting presentation or capturing the zeitgeist.

Sometimes this means leveraging the prestige and history of a brand and in other cases, it means forging a new path. Each company will have a different branding journey.

At the same time, it also does not mean that companies that have historically done very well with their marketing will continue to do so. Many companies famed for their marketing have had some terrible missteps in their past, but ones with lessons for them and everyone else in their sector to learn.

Apple

Probably the king of technology branding, Apple have developed an incredibly strong corporate identity built largely on the ideas of freedom, rebellion and expression.

This is certainly true with examples such as the famous vibrant iPod advert and many of the iPhone adverts which demonstrate features of the devices in unique and interesting ways.

Whilst they do not always get it right, famously getting backlash in early 2024 for crushing the entire creative world for yet another tablet, they generally do very well to maintain a particular house style and strong identity.

This was true as far back as the 1980s, with the famous Ridley Scott 1984 Macintosh advert capturing everything about the product and its message in a minute-long mini-movie, maintaining an aura despite only ever being widely broadcast once.

However, the very next year, they followed it up with not only an ineffective advert but one of the worst and most counterproductive follow-ups they could have mustered.

In early 1985, another Super Bowl advert entitled “Lemmings” was broadcast that was meant to advertise the Macintosh Office, a fraught and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to pivot Apple into the incredibly busy business computer marketplace.

The strategy in itself was questionable; instead of pushing further to make the Macintosh unique, it was an attempt to fit a square peg into a round hole. However, it might have worked had the delivery of that message and strategy not been so terrible.

To a discordant, slowed-down version of the song Heigh-Ho from the 1937 Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the adverts showed a collection of blindfolded office workers walking through a desolate, foggy, wasteland towards a cliff that they would fall off one at a time.

One person lifts the blindfold whilst a narrator advises the audience to “look into” Macintosh office, or keep going with “business as usual”.

Treating potential customers as blind lemmings with iconography uncomfortably close to blind soldiers akin to Victory Over Blindness was seen as distasteful, insulting and uncomfortable.

This was a far cry from the optimistic individualism of Apple’s 1984, which promised a future where the dystopian conformism showcased would not happen, as long as people bought Macintoshes.

What made it worse was that the Office product was delayed for two years following Steve Jobs’ departure from Apple, so all of this was in service of a product that was never really released as advertised.