Posted on : 2022-07-15 03:08:59
Article : Good evening, Friday- Management TASK 199- Will media mistakes cost Brands and manufacturers their reputation and might lower the sales too…!!
Media advertising is essential for every brand manufacturer for consumer brand awareness and purchase. Advertising channels mainly chosen are electronic, print and outdoor media of which electronic media leave a strong impact reflecting in sales.
While CPG brands advertise major part of the year, home appliances, automotive, infrastructure related products, and Finance products are relatively seasonal campaigners. It is accepted that the media advertisements help the brand sales but at the same time the media mistakes may damage the reputation of brands lowering its sales. It is not limited to regional or national brands but global majors are also not exceptional from bearing the brunt. Sometimes it is their advertising agency and sometimes it is in-house concept planning and production that brings the ire of public, resulting in damaging the brand manufacturer reputation and sales. But these media mistakes are found to be of regular occurrence for major global CPG brands.
In this TASK part we wish to discuss two recent examples of two global marketers’ brands that faced the reputation crisis.
Late 2017 Pepsi presented a brand-new advertising campaign featuring Kendall Jenner a mega-celebrity. In the video, Kendall throws off her black wig and runs away from a photo shoot to join a protest in the street. The most epic moment of the video is when Kendall hands a can of Pepsi to a white police officer, who takes a sip and smiles at his partners. Within 48 hours the video got nearly 1.6 million views on YouTube. The advertisement was immediately called as racist and the best example of white and economic privilege. This was at the time there were many sorts of demonstrations were regular scenario in US. The social media crisis had begun. This fiasco affected the market value of the company.
Similarly, Unilever in 2018/19 had one more pathetic experience with its Red Label Tea brand ad in their Indian Kumbh mela ad which showed Kumbh Mela as a place where old people get abandoned- isn’t it sad that we do not care for our elders? The ad told a short story of a son who is thinking of abandoning his ageing father in the crowd at Kumbh Mela but later realizes his mistake and returns to share a cup of tea with his old father. No sooner the ad appeared, Millions of public tweeted it a serious as insensitivity and disrespecting the human parental bondage.
Both these media mistakes were immediately rescued by the Brand Marketers Pepsi and Unilever but not before losing reputation and sales to an extent. Now share your insights and experiences from your career period or from general observations to caution the working professionals on media releases. Our insight will be posted on our Good morning management solution post on 18 th July 22.
Log on to www.wingsofmanagement.com to know more about our “Strategy Management consultancy’s” versatile capabilities, global clients and to read our weekly posts and our projects.