7 of the Biggest Mistakes in Branding and Advertising!

Everything from flawed logo designs to bad advertising. Here’s our list of the biggest branding mistakes made by some popular brands you might recognize.

Seth Godin once said that a brand is a set of expectations. So what happens when you squander that expectation? Sometimes loss in Business, sometimes a loss in Goodwill, sometimes Lawsuits and sometimes all of it. Everything from flawed logo designs to bad advertising. Here’s our list of the biggest branding mistakes made by some popular brands you might recognize.

GAP
It is estimated that GAP lost nearly $ 100 Million in the year 2010. Why? In 2010, the company decided that they needed to rebrand. As a part of their rebranding strategy, they decided to ‘crowdsource’ their new logo. The new logo chosen by the company looked like it was made by a toddler on Powerpoint. As expected, this led to extreme criticism from fans and within 6 days of launching their new logo GAP backtracked to the safety of the old one.

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GUCCI V/S GUESS
Gucci first filed a lawsuit against Guess in a New York Federal Court in 2009, accusing Guess of trademark infringement and counterfeiting. Gucci was initially hoping for a settlement of $221 million but the New York Court’s judgement was in favour of Gucci with a settlement of only $4.7 million. Following this, the Gucci filed lawsuits against Guess in several countries, including China and Australia.

FUBU
The founder of the clothing company Fubu, Daymond John, decided to expand the brand’s appeal by starting he own record label. ‘The Good Life’ rap compilation produced by the label featured artists like Dogg, Nas, Ludacris and many more and was produced in $6 million. In Mr John’s own words, “I blew $6 million because I did not hire or strategically align myself with anybody who knew anything about music. We didn’t know the numbers, we didn’t look at our numbers, we were spending money like drunken sailors, we were getting caught up. Did we get exposure? Yes, but from the business model, we died.”

GAP (once again)
In 2012, the following tweet went up on the official page of GAP, during Hurrican Sandy.

INSTAGRAM
People had come to love the vintage camera that was the logo of Instagram and helped it become a viable competitor to Facebook. However, after Facebook took over Instagram they almost immediately changed the much-loved logo, much to the disappointment of some Instagram Fans.

JACK AND JONES
In the time that we live in, there are certain things that people just don’t have the patience for and more. this s one of the billboard ads by the clothing company Jack and Jones. The brand had to apologize and withdraw this ad immediately.

POPCHIPS
The infamous Popchips ad featuring Ashton Kutcher came under much fire for the actor’s brownface make-up. The Indian Community heavily criticized the brand for propagating stereotypes and disrespecting cultural diversity.