He was just a kid with a banana in front of an Audi. What can happen to this ad campaign?
A lot, said Twitter, and everyone.
“Was this photo taken 3 nanoseconds before impact? That’s all I have an idea when I saw this terrible picture.” a tweeter of the opinion.
“With a more sensitive speed of 174 mph, this car will be illegal depending on the number of young people it will kill due to the speed and pollution it contributes. Instead, do you need to sell this car WITH A LIFE? Probably the lowest moment in Audi, ” said another.
Others criticized the symbol of a child holding a fruit that, for some, denotes a sexual act.
Audi temporarily withdrew the announcement after the public outcry and tweeted, “We sincerely ask for this callable symbol and make sure it is no longer used in the future.”
But the German company is the first car manufacturer to stumble upon distressed ads.
Mercedes-Benz brought a feature called CarTogether on its SL models at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in 2012. But they used a symbol of Che Guevara, the Argentine revolutionary who helped Fidel Castro take Cuba in 1959 and ordered the execution of thousands of people. of men, women and young people — at the presentation.
The symbol only gave the impression for a few seconds, but that was enough to shock many other people on the Cuban network and elsewhere, and provoked a public apology from Mercedes. “Daimler did not spare the life or movements of this ancient figure or the political philosophy he supported,” Daimler, Mercedes-Benz’s parent company, said in a statement. “We sincerely apologize to those who have been offended.”
Dodge produced an ad for his 2007 Nitro showing a dog urinating in one of his cars, after which the animal pierced a lightning bolt and died, accompanied by dying dog screams.
Chrysler apologized after a public outcry.
In 2013, Hyundai apologized after a British ad warned that the broadcasts of their cars were so small that no one could simply kill themselves. The company has been criticized for keeping out the approximately 800,000 people who commit suicide each year around the world.
And finally, no story about car advertising mistakes is complete without the narrative of this notorious failure, the Edsel, whose ads have not offended, but instead left consumers in the dark, to further fuel a frenzy of anticipation. That’s the plan, anyway.
Ford entered the average cost chart in 1954. It seemed like a wonderful concept: the U.S. economy was booming, promoting about 7 million cars a year.
Ford named “E-Day” on September 4, 1957, and moved the previous year to a teaser advertising crusade that worked because it ceded the public interest. But this audience came, saw, nodded and howled, kicked the tires and left without buying.
To be honest, it’s not just the advertising crusade that condemned Edsel. Mechanical disorders haunted them from the beginning. Its label also seemed high, but that was partly because 1958 and other people were used to 1957 prices. A recession didn’t help at all.
After a year of low sales, Ford tried to save his Edsel with $20 million in advertising. But in November 1959, almost two years after its auspicious debut, the Edsel died and consolidated his legacy as one of the greatest and dear failures of all-time cars.
I check and read about cars, trucks, motorcycles and all kinds of machines, wherever they are: United States, Europe, Asia, Bronx. I also published 7 Op-Eds in New York
I check and read about cars, trucks, motorcycles and all kinds of machines, wherever they are: United States, Europe, Asia, Bronx. I also posted 7 Op-Eds in the NY Times, nothing to do with cars. Please stay with me at Insta. https://www.instagram.com/sirmaxolot