Adidas shackles shoes
Shackles on sneakers, a product that's heavily marketed to black consumers? Really? Yep, making this the marketing blunder of the year so far. Just one look at the Adidas JS Roundhouse Mid sneaks, which had been scheduled for release in August, and you could anticipate the reaction. These shackle sneaks sparked howls of outrage from black leaders who denounced them as "slave shoes." The Rev. Jesse Jackson called them a "gross insult." Adidas apologized and withdrew the shoes. But it maintained the shoe was "nothing more than the designer Jeremy Scott's outrageous and unique take on fashion" and had nothing to do with slavery. It's possible that the prison-orange shackles were meant as a reference to "thug life" glorified in many strains of hip hop music. After all, the loose fitting, baggy pants look sported by some in the hip hop culture originated as a form of "prison chic." But even this explanation doesn't get Adidas off the hook. "If that's the case, it's not the shoe, but the decision to market a product that perpetuates negative values by glorifying prison life that I find offensive," says marketing expert Frankel.
Ben & Jerry's Lin-Sanity frozen yogurt
Given the liberal leanings of Ben & Jerry's founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, you might think they'd be the last people to cook up a product that reinforces shallow cultural stereotypes. But earlier this year, Ben & Jerry's rolled out a vanilla-flavored frozen yogurt named "Taste the Lin-Sanity," to capitalize on the popularity of New York Knicks basketball player Jeremy Lin, who is Asian-American. Sadly, the yogurt contained fortune cookie pieces mixed in with honey swirls. Of course, Ben & Jerry's has been owned by Unilever (UL) for more than a decade, so we don't know how much the original duo had to do with the recipe. But after the inevitable backlash, Unilever replaced the cookie pieces with waffle cone chunks. Unilever claimed the switch was because the fortune cookies got soggy. But it also apologized to anyone who got offended by the Lin-Sanity fortune cookie yogurt. It wasn't the first time an irreverent Ben & Jerry's flavor crossed the line to spark controversy. Last year, it released an ice cream flavor called Schweddy Balls, a reference to a Saturday Night Live sketch where Alec Baldwin plays a baker named Pete Schweddy who sells popcorn balls, cheese balls, rum ball . . . well you know where that sketch went. Groups such as One Million Moms protested, and stores pulled Schweddy Balls off the shelves.
Ghettopoly
You can buy dozens of versions of the classic board game Monopoly based on different source materials: cities, the Beatles, the Lord of the Rings and many more. So how about a parody of Monopoly with blatant racial overtones called Ghettopoly? Replace the railroads with liquor stores, and populate the board with other off-color properties like a peep show, a pawnshop and a massage parlor. For good measure, lace the game with racially charged references to pimps, crack houses, carjackings and 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor. Who could possibly be offended? Urban Outfitters (URBN) found out when it stocked this ill-conceived game after its 2003 release. Ghettopoly was quickly condemned as racist by the NAACP and black clergy, among others, prompting Urban Outfitters to pull it. Even Hasbro (HAS) joined in, suing Ghettopoly's inventor because of the similarities to Monopoly, which it owns. (It had nothing to do with the ghetto version.)
Abercrombie thongs for children
Sex. Kids. You'd think any large corporation would know not to mix the two. Apparently no one got the memo at Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF). In 2002, it released a line of thong underwear for children, complete with sexually provocative slogans like "eye candy" and "wink wink." A look at Abercrombie advertising shows that a big part of its marketing strategy involves the use of sexuality. But slapping slogans with sexual overtones on thongs for children obviously crosses the line. Heck, thongs for children might cross the line all by themselves. The company claimed the underwear was supposed to be "lighthearted and cute" and that "any misrepresentation of that is purely in the eyes of the beholder." But it pulled the product, nevertheless.
Barf detergent
Believe it or not, every week there are people who wash their clothes in Barf. That sounds downright disgusting. But "barf" is the phonetic version of the word for "snow" in Farsi, the predominant Persian language. This makes it OK, sort of, that the Iranian company Paxan uses an English word for vomit as the name for a laundry detergent. Still, translated it has to be the worst name for a laundry soap ever. This isn't the first cross-language brand-name mishap, and it won't be the last. Chevy Nova sales may have lagged in Latin America because "no va" means "doesn't go," in Spanish. Kraft Foods (KFT) recently announced it's changing the name of its snacks division to Mondelez, which unfortunately sounds a lot like an expression for a sexual act in Russian, says Ira Kalb, assistant professor of clinical marketing at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business.
Oreo Fun Barbie
The Oreo, of course, is an enduringly popular cookie from Nabisco. But it's also a pejorative term used by some to describe black people who are "white on the inside." This definition of Oreo itself is a can of worms I'd rather not get into. You'd think that Mattel (MAT), which makes the Barbie doll, wouldn't want to go there, either. But in the early 1990s, it joined with Nabisco to offer an Oreo Fun Barbie. A Caucasian version sold well. So in 1997, Mattel released a black version of the Oreo Barbie. She sports an Oreo-shaped handbag, a long-sleeve turtleneck with an Oreo cookie design, and a skirt with an Oreo emblazoned on the pocket, along with the brand name for good measure. That product identification didn't fend off the howls. The black Oreo Barbie soon disappeared from shelves, though it now sells for about $30 on eBay, or three times what the white Oreo Barbie commands. This wasn't the only bizarre Barbie to ever hit the shelves. Mattel has also released a pooper-scooper Barbie, a tattoo Barbie and a Hitchcock Barbie, complete with removable birds. The black version of Oreo Barbie, though, still stands out as Mattel's biggest Barbie blunder.
The iBeat Blaxx music player
Several years ago, a German company called TrekStor introduced a line of MP3 players called the iBeat. Inevitably, it would roll out a sleek, all-black version of its MP3 player, setting itself up for a train wreck. Apparently, no one at TrekStor thought it might be offensive to call the music player the iBeat Blaxx. Yikes. "Of course the word 'Beat' is not meant as a verb, but refers to the beats of the music you are listening to," the company explained in an email published by Gizmodo, a tech news website that rightly protested the offensive name of the music player about five years ago. Note to marketers: If you ever find yourself having to offer an explanation like that, you know you're in trouble. TrekStor quickly renamed the product the "TrekStor blaxx,' but only after making it clear that it "condemns violence and any form of racism" and that it was "shocked by the way our new MP3 player's name . . . is perceived." I'm shocked that no one at the company thought about this first.
'I'm too pretty to do homework'
In August 2011, J.C. Penney (JCP) seemingly thumbed its nose at all the hard work done to dispel sexist stereotypes about women when it released a shirt with the slogan "I'm too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me." The shirt sparked a backlash, forcing Penney to pull it and apologize. (Read more about the controversy.) This wasn't the first time a major company dredged up the sexist story line that women are merely pretty objects who can't compete in the workplace. In 2005, Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) launched a shirt for women that said across the front "Who needs brains when you have these?" And in the early 1990s Mattel caught fire for a Teen Talk Barbie, which counted "Math class is tough" among the phrases it could utter on command. That phrase was deleted from the Barbie's memory banks after the inevitable backlash. "I happen to be a math major, so I get why people say 'don't stereotype women that way,'" says Guidry, of The Rite Concept, who has also served on the board of the Qualitative Research Consultants Association. "That's a 1950s view. A lot of good mathematicians are women." And it's doubtful they wear the Penney's T-shirts.
The Reebok Incubus shoe for women
Adidas isn't the first shoe brand to find itself backpedaling. In the late 1990s, Reebok (which is now owned by Adidas) launched a running shoe for women called Incubus. Small problem: An incubus is a mythical demon that violates women in their sleep. Reebok got lucky, in a sense, since it had only put the offensive name on the box, and not the shoes. But it was at a loss to explain how the problem happened. ''I'm horrified and the company is horrified,'' Reebok spokeswoman Kate Burnham said at the time. ''How the name got on the shoe and went forward, I do not know." Marketing expert Frankel, author of "The Revenge of Brand X: How to Build a Big Time Brand on the Web or Anywhere Else," has an idea: "There are not a lot of well-educated or all-that intelligent people in marketing." Frankel's take sounds harsh, but it makes sense. Even for someone who hasn't read up on mythology, it's fairly obvious by checking a dictionary that "incubus" is another word for nightmare. In short, not a great name for a running shoe, mythical demons or no.
The 'Lolita' bed for pre-teen girls
Here's another case where checking a dictionary might have helped. In 2008, Woolworths in Britain sold a bed set with a pull-out desk and cupboard for young girls named the "Lolita Midsleeper Combi." The chain maintains it was unaware that "Lolita" can be a name used to describe sexually active preteen girls, and is also the title of a famous Vladimir Nabokov novel about a guy who has sex with his 12-year-old stepdaughter. The book has been made into a film twice, including a version by Stanley Kubrick. It's not clear what the marketers thought it meant. But angry parents caught the reference. They complained, and Woolworths pulled the Lolita bed.
Pillsbury Chinese Cherry drink mix
Ah the "innocent" 1960s that we can all get a feel for by watching "Mad Men," the AMC series about the advertising world in that bygone era when men were men, life was simpler and racial stereotypes were... well... more acceptable. Few popular products illustrate this as well as Pillsbury Funny Face Chinese Cherry drink mix. It featured a cherry face logo with buck teeth that played on a widespread Asian stereotype of the time. Pillsbury changed the name of the drink mix to Choo-Choo Cherry in 1966, which tells us that the offensive racial stereotype was on the market for two years. This wasn't the only Pillsbury drink character to stir people up; the company had another called Injun Orange, shown above. That seems pretty amazing today, but the same era brought us marketing icons like the Frito Bandito, a sombrero-wearing Mexican. "The Frito Bandito was pulled because it was offensive to Mexicans. You couldn't do the Frito Bandito today," says Hanft, of Hanft Projects. Of course, if you've watched "Mad Men," you can imagine the admen's excuse: They were probably drunk at the time.
Ayds appetite-suppressant candy
We can't blame this one on the marketers; rather, sometimes a product is just overtaken by history. During the 1970s and early 1980s, a product called Ayds was sold successfully as an appetite-suppressant candy for weight loss. But by the mid-1980s, Ayds sales were hammered because the product name sounded exactly like the name of a frightening epidemic that was spreading rapidly -- AIDS. The company behind Ayds, Dep, first tried to get by with a name change to Diet Ayds. But then it pulled the product. "They just got unlucky," says Rob Frankel, a brand management expert with Frankel & Anderson.
Five Wives Vodka
While it may not be common, sometimes what looks like a stupidly offensive product really is just a cheap play for the publicity. And it works. Case in point: Ogden's Own Distillery, which sells Five Wives Vodka. Though the Mormon Church denounced polygamy in the late 1800s and Utah banned the practice at the same time, misconceptions persist. So it's no surprise that Ogden's Own launched Five Wives Vodka in Utah and Idaho, states with large Mormon populations. The label features a historic Vaudeville photo of five women modestly lifting their skirts. Idaho regulators took the bait, moving to ban the product in June for being "offensive to a prominent segment of our population." Then they quickly backed down following threats of a lawsuit. The maneuvering generated lots of coverage and no doubt boosted Five Wives Vodka sales. Ogden's Own says the Five Wives label contains no references to religion or polygamy, which is technically true but totally beside the point. "Companies sometimes make a quick hit by turning cultural memes into a novelty product," says brand strategist Hanft. "It's the underbelly of entrepreneurship. We've seen this before, and we will see it again."
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