Major PR Disasters of the Social Media Age
By Maxim Behar
An excerpt from my bestseller “The Global PR Revolution.”
Cosmopolitan Magazine’s Weight Loss Article Headline
In April 2017, Cosmopolitan magazine found itself in a PR crisis because of a tweet and an article headline reading, “How This Woman Lost 44 Pounds without *ANY* Exercise.” It turned out that the woman in question had lost weight because of a rare cancer. Disturbed readers attacked Cosmo, whose eventual reaction was to change the headline to “A Serious Health Scare Helped Me Love My Body More than Ever.” Neither the magazine nor its owner, Hearst Communications, offered a formal apology, which made it the target of further criticism on social media.
Adidas’s Boston Marathon “Survival”
Email In April 2017, four years after the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and injured hundreds of others, Adidas made a sorry PR blunder. It emailed Boston Marathon participants with the subject line, “Congrats, you survived the Boston Marathon!” Social media immediately picked up on the insensitive wording, prompting Adidas to issue a swift apology. While the wording was unfortunate, the quick reaction was believed to spare the company much more serious social media backlash.
Ed Miliband’s Bacon Sandwich Fail
An attempt by former UK Labor Party leader Ed Miliband to consume a bacon sandwich during the 2014 local elections campaign is considered by some to be among the most iconic PR disasters in British history. The act is said to have been a PR stunt designed to position Miliband “as one of the common people.” Instead, it backfired because of the apparent awkwardness, leading to intense ridicule on social media and criticism of the then Labor leader as being “out of touch with the working class.” Miliband, however, is deemed to have subsequently managed to mitigate the effects of the PR gaffe by demonstrating that he did not take himself too seriously.
US Department of Defense’s Low-Flying Planes over Manhattan
In 2009, the US Department of Defense spurred a scare followed by outrage by organizing an Air Force One photo-op without notifying anyone in New York City. The sight of a plane flying over Manhattan pursued by a fighter jet was quick to bring painful 9/11 memories among New York City’s residents and tourists, resulting in widespread panic all over lower Manhattan. Then, US President Barack Obama was said to have been infuriated by the incident. “Poor judgment would have been a nice way to put it,” then-NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg commented. The Department of Defense official responsible for the mistake resigned.
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