The 6 Biggest Marketing Blunders of 2024

BY ANNABEL BURBA, EDITORIAL FELLOW @ANNIEBURBA

It’s increasingly difficult to stand out in today’s crowded, fast-paced market. Trends come and go, algorithms shift, and audiences migrate. To cope, brands and agencies have to “experiment with many new things to try to find out what works, what resonates with consumers,” says Kinshuk Jerath, professor of marketing at Columbia Business School.

But that doesn’t always land the right way, as Aaron Walker, managing director of the integrated marketing firm Think Big, warns. Sometimes, brands are “in such a rush to connect in fun and almost viral ways” that they forget what matters most to their target audience, and end up alienating or offending them, he notes. Here are six big-name companies that fell into that trap this year.

1. Jaguar

Legacy British car brand Jaguar almost broke the internet last month with its colorful, futuristic “Copy nothing” rebrand. Jaguar’s initial announcement video—which now has more than 170 million views on X—drew intense criticism from many users, including Elon Musk, for failing to feature any cars. Several other brands on the app also mocked Jaguar’s new logo. 

Walker calls it “the great rebrand that no one asked for.” With this campaign, he says that Jaguar abandoned its heritage clientele in favor of a new audience—a move that may or may not pay off. Either way, Walker says, “I applaud them for not caring what anybody says about it and sticking to what they think is the next chapter of their corporate journey.”

Richard Stevens, Jaguar’s director of design, recently told Fast Company that despite the negativity, his team took “real pride” in the amount of emotional responses their campaign stirred up. 

2. Bumble

Dating app Bumble began posting on Instagram about a mysterious new “chapter” last spring. It turned out to be a minor app redesign and an ad campaign centered on women’s exhaustion with the modern dating scene. It sparked controversy online by featuring billboards with copy like, “You know full well that a vow of celibacy is not the answer.”

Bumble quickly issued an apology on Instagram, pulled down all of the ads, and made a donation to the National Domestic Violence Hotline when users pointed out that “celibacy may be brought on by harm or trauma.”

Walker says he finds the Bumble fumble—as many news outlets have called it—“particularly interesting” because “it’s a perfect example of trying to be edgy and forgetting what matters to their consumer and to their client.” The controversial campaign, in his opinion, would have been a better fit for competing app Tinder.

3. Apple

This spring, Apple did something rare: It apologized.

The tech giant released an ad in which an industrial crusher smashes several creative tools—including a guitar, paint cans, and cameras—to reveal its new iPad Pro. This ad was meant to “celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad,” Tor Myhren, Apple’s VP of marketing communications, told AdAge. But the imagery incensed many artists, including actor Hugh Grant. Several X users also pointed out that the ad looked remarkably similar to a 2008 ad by LG.

Myhren said, “We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.” 

Amore Philip, founder and CEO of Apples and Oranges Public Relations, says she thinks much of the pushback here is due to cancel culture: “Everyone is trying to find a way to be offended.” And though she admits she’s not an artist, she says, “I did not find that to be offensive in any way.” Jerath considers this campaign “just a small misstep.”

4. Google

Google reportedly spent about $2.7 million this summer on TV placements for “Dear Sydney,” an Olympics-themed AI commercial. But less than a week after its debut, Google pulled it down and disabled comments on YouTube.

The ad shows a father asking Gemini, Google’s artificial intelligence tool, to help his daughter write a letter to her hero, Olympic track star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. And though Alana Beale, a spokesperson for Google, told Marketing Brew in a statement that “the ad tested well before airing,” it received an overwhelmingly negative response once it went live.

Marketers need to be aware that the public “is really skeptical of AI” right now, Walker says. “People are longing and looking for different ways to reinvigorate that sense of humanity,” rather than replace it.

5. Unwell

After teasing a new product on Instagram, Call Her Daddy podcast host and Unwell founder Alex Cooper launched Unwell Hydration, an electrolyte drink made in partnership with Nestlé. But many of her fans were underwhelmed. One Instagram user commented, “Wait, was this the big surprise? Because this is the most disappointing surprise I’ve ever gotten in my life.”

The “drink makes sense to me from a brand perspective,” Philip says—Cooper’s raunchy party girl persona pairs well with a hangover recovery drink—but consumers are becoming sick of celebrity-owned products. “When there’s a celebrity involved now, [fans suspect] it’s not really about delivering a good product,” she says. Rather, it’s about making money.

6. Coca-Cola 

This year, Coca-Cola made the bold decision to recreate its iconic 1995 “Holidays Are Coming” commercial using AI. The brand asked three different creative agencies to make one-minute ads that show Coca-Cola trucks lighting up a winter night, and X users were quick to critique the results. Alex Hirsch, the creator of Gravity Falls, even wrote that Coca-Cola is red “because it’s made from the blood of out-of-work artists.”

Rob Wrubel, founder of creative agency Silverside AI, which created one of the ads, spoke with Marketing Brew about the internet’s reaction. “Of course you always want everyone to just universally love it,” he said, but “this is bound to happen when big brands step in and want to innovate.”

Walker points to this as another example of brands struggling to answer the question of how to best use AI in marketing: “I don’t think a lot of people know the answer yet … this is the next big horizon of marketing, communications, and public relations.”

Photo: Apple.