Commentary by Edward Segal, a crisis management expert and author of Crisis Ahead: 101 Ways to Prepare for and Bounce Back from Disasters, Scandals, and Other Emergencies.

Getting attention for a company's products is important—but so is sending the right message about the products, and why people should buy them. Companies that send the wrong message run the risk of generating negative publicity for themselves and creating controversies about the brands they promote.

Adidas

Last July, Adidas apologized for a controversial campaign that paid tribute to the 1972 Munich Olympics, where members of a militant Palestinian group killed 11 members of the Israeli team. All of the promotional photos for the campaign were removed from the brand's social media and its website, according to ENews.

"We are conscious that connections have been made to [a] tragic historical event—though these are completely unintentional—and we apologize for any upset or distress caused," Adidas said in a statement to USA Today Sports. "As a result, we are revising the remainder of the campaign."

&pizza

DC-based restaurant chain &pizza faced immediate backlash this week when it promoted a dessert called "Marion Berry knots," which are pieces of dough covered with powdered sugar and made with marionberries.

"Ads for the dessert make the powdered sugar look like cocaine sealed in tiny plastic bags, clearly making fun of [former DC Mayor Marion] Barry's infamous drug arrest from the 1990s when he was caught smoking crack in an FBI sting operation," WTOP News reported.

Demands To Remove The Dessert

The NAACP DC issued a statement lastTuesday demanding that &pizza remove the dessert from the menu, calling it "inflammatory, culturally insensitive and drug-use insinuating," especially in light of the upcoming 10th anniversary of his death," according to Restaurant Business.

"The life, legacy, lineage and name of Marion Barry deserves to be remembered as a pioneer for economic development, real-estate development, black business empowerment, youth employment and as the Mayor of the people. Mayor Barry taught us the power of economics and today, we call on the community to demand &pizza right this egregious wrong," Akosua Ali, president of the NAACP DC, said in the statement.

'We Made A Mistake'

"Candidly, we made a mistake," CEO Mike Burns, said in a statement as reported by the Washington Post. "While humor was our intent, it was regrettably off the mark.

"We're an edgy brand known for being risk takers. The parody of the former Mayor and portrayal of substance abuse was wrong. We have read the countless messages and social media posts and understand the frustration this has brought forth—especially to the Barry family," Burns concluded.

&pizza dropped the controversial item from its menu and withdrew the offensive ad.

Apple

iPad Commercial

Apple found out the hard way this year what can go wrong when offensive images are used to market a product after it started to advertise its iPads in a commercial that was quickly dubbed the "crushing creativity" ad.

"It was supposed to be a clever product demonstration for Apple's latest sleek, artificial intelligence-powered iPad Pro," Adweek reported. "But the brand, typically praised for its advertising, sparked a wave of backlash for a commercial that crushes and destroys creative tools. 

Not The Metaphor Apple Wanted

But instead of seeing how an iPad could help them create, most people saw the ad "as [a] metaphor for how Big Tech has cashed in on their work by crushing or co-opting the artistic tools that humanity has used for centuries. The image was especially unnerving at a time when artists fear that generative artificial intelligence, which can write poetry and create movies, might take away their jobs," according to the New York Times.

"It's unusual in its cruelty," said Justin Ouellette, a software designer in Portland, Ore., who does animation work and is a longtime Apple product user. "A lot of people see this as a betrayal of its commitment to human creative expression and a tone deafness to the pressures those artists feel at this time," he told the newspaper.

Apple Sorry For Controversial Commercial

"Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it's incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world," Apple marketing vice president Tor Myhren said in a statement to Ad Age. "Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we're sorry."

Stereotyped Images

Apple was in hot water again a few months later after pulling the "crushing" ad when it ran a 10-minute ad on YouTube that showed how co-workers in Thailand used the company's products to address workplace-related issues.

Critics charged that the ad portrayed an outdated and stereotyped image of Thailand that made the company look as if it were underdeveloped.

"Thai people are deeply unhappy with the advertisement," Thai lawmaker Sattra Sripan said in a statement reported by Bloomberg. "I encourage Thai people to stop using Apple products and change to other brands."

Apple's Response To The Controversy

"Our intent was to celebrate the country's optimism and culture, and we apologize for not fully capturing the vibrancy of Thailand today," Apple said in a statement. "The film is no longer being aired," The Verge reported.

Apple pulled the ad from its YouTube channel.

KFC

As I wrote in 2022, KFC  sent a promotional message to customers in Germany that year, noting that "It's memorial day for Kristallnacht! Treat yourself with more tender cheese on your crispy chicken. Now at KFCheese!"

Kristallnacht is widely seen as the beginning of the Holocaust, the BBC explained.

About an hour after sending the first message, the comapny sent an apology, which blamed the mistakenly sent communication on "a fault in our system," according to The Guardian.

KFC said that it "sincerely" apologized for the "unplanned, insensitive and unacceptable message" the BBC reported.

The missteps these companies made are important lessons for all business leaders that marketing messages should be in sync with how brands are perceived by the public, and that ads will do nothing to harm the reputation of the products or the companies that make them.

If not, the result could be controversies—or crisis situations.

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