There's this place in Portland called Sweet Rise Bakery that posted a weird meme making fun of gluten-free customers... and the comments section just exploded. They tried to fix it with a 3-paragraph apology that basically said "we were just joking" instead of actually owning it. I bet they lost at least 200 customers from that one post. Has anyone else seen a brand dig themselves in deeper with a bad apology?
I saw the teardown videos for the Echo Dot 4th gen versus the 5th gen, and the newer one went from a 7-mic array down to 4 mics (which explains why mine stopped hearing me from across the room). Has anyone else had their smart speaker get worse at picking up commands after a hardware revision like that?
She posted a video saying she drank it every morning for a year, but the company ended up paying a $300k fine for fake testimonials and I guess I should've known better than to trust someone who can't even spell 'ingredients' right, has anyone else fallen for a brand that turned out to be completely fabricated?
Last month a guy commented on our Instagram after we messed up an order. He said our apology was copy-paste, like we didn't even read his complaint. I talked to him on the phone for 20 minutes. He told me every brand uses the same 'we're sorry, we'll do better' line and it means nothing. Said he'd respect us more if we just named what we screwed up and how we'd fix it specific to him. We rewrote our whole response template after that. Has anyone else had a customer call you out and it actually made you change your whole approach?
I remember when that 2019 ad came out and people went NUTS. They lost like $8 billion in market value over 12 months. But earlier this year they dropped the 'First Shave' ad showing a dad teaching his son with down syndrome to shave and it was just wholesome with no agenda. Their apology approach was totally different too - the first one they doubled down, the second they just let it breathe. Anyone else notice how brands that try to make a statement get destroyed vs just showing real moments?
Signed up for a webinar last month from some PR guru who claimed to fix brand disasters. Cost me $300 and it was just 2 hours of him bragging about clients he worked with 10 years ago. No actual steps, no templates, just a sales pitch for his $2000 coaching program. Anyone else get burned by one of these online courses that promise the world?
I messaged Patagonia support last week about a worn zipper on a 3 year old jacket I bought in Portland, and instead of the usual friendly help, I got a one line reply saying 'check our repair page.' They usually have that whole 'we'll fix anything' vibe, but this felt like they just didn't care. Has anyone else gotten brushed off by a brand you thought was all about customer service?
I was reading a DOT report from June and found out Delta only gave $10 gift cards to people stuck for over 12 hours on the tarmac. Has anyone here actually gotten one of those cards or just me?
I was stoked last month when my small coffee shop account finally crossed 50k followers on Instagram. Thought we were doing everything right, you know? Then I posted a dumb meme about a local bakery that didn't land well. Within 2 hours we lost like 1,200 followers and got flooded with comments calling us out for being rude. Our apology post tried to laugh it off, but it made things worse. Now I'm sitting here wondering if the milestone even mattered when one bad post can wipe out months of trust. Has anyone else hit a big number and then watched it backfire the same week?
I saw this yesterday where a burger chain posted an apology for a mix-up on an order, but they used a stock photo of a completely different sandwich. It was from a place near Phoenix called Burger Barn, and they tried to fix it by saying 'oops wrong pic' instead of addressing the actual mistake. Has anyone else caught a brand doing something silly like that in their PR cleanup?
Last year a bakery near me in Portland posted a photo of a cake with a slur written in frosting as a "joke." They deleted it after an hour, then put up this weird apology that blamed "an intern" and said they were "learning." People screenshot everything, so they got caught in a lie when the owner was the one who posted it. The apology got ratioed so hard they actually closed for a week to "reevaluate." Has anyone else seen a brand try to blame an intern and make people even angrier?
Last Saturday I tried to order the $5 Build Your Own Cravings Box through the app, but when I hit checkout it jumped to $8.49 with some 'convenience fee' they hid in the fine print. Customer support on Twitter said they'd fix it but 4 days later still nothing. Has anyone else got burned by fast food apps pulling this bait and switch nonsense?
I manage social media for a small local diner chain, about 8 locations in Ohio. After that burger brand's apology went viral last month for being kinda funny and honest, I thought we should try something similar when we messed up an order for a big catering event. We posted a short video with our owner saying sorry directly, no corporate talk. People absolutely roasted us for copying the format, called it fake and lazy. We lost like 300 followers in a day and had to delete it. Has anyone else tried borrowing a popular apology style and it just bombed?
They posted a 500 word essay about how sorry they were for messing up an order, but the photo attached showed the wrong pizza entirely... Has anyone else seen a brand make things worse by trying to be sincere too fast?
I tried their new 'artisan blend' after seeing that tearful apology post about the old beans being bad, paid $6 for a cup that tasted burnt. Half the comments were praising their transparency, but my first sip told me they just swapped one problem for another. Anyone else think those big apology stunts just distract from fixing the actual product?
I stumbled on this in a Forbes article from last year and couldn't believe they'd waste legal fees going after one person when the whole internet was already roasting them for that disastrous holiday ad.
So I was scrolling through old marketing fails last night and landed on KFC's 2018 'FCK' billboard after they ran out of chicken in the UK. At first I thought it was some random photo, then I read the story and couldn't stop cracking up at how they turned a total supply chain disaster into a cheeky apology. It took them 10 hours to even google the outage, but another 2 days to get that ad up. Has anyone else seen a brand own a screwup that perfectly?
I was sitting in a bar in Austin three weeks ago, watching some guys argue about whether to order a round of Bud Light. One guy refused flat out, said he'd rather drink water. That's when it hit me how bad that whole campaign backfired. They spent like $2 million on a partnership with one influencer, and within a few months their sales dropped by over 25%. The weird part is nobody I talked to actually cared about the cans themselves, they just got caught in the middle of a culture war. I keep wondering if the brand even understood their own customer base before they greenlit that thing. Has anyone else seen a product just vanish from shelves that fast after a PR move?
I was scrolling through YouTube the other night and stumbled on a documentary about brand disasters. Had no idea that one ad with Kendall Jenner handing a cop a Pepsi actually made their stock drop by that much. Like 4 billion dollars gone in a few days because people thought it was tone deaf about protest movements. The worst part is they tried to fix it by pulling the ad fast and apologizing, but the damage was already done. I remember seeing that ad back then and thinking it was weird but not realizing how huge the fallout was. Honestly makes me wonder how many other brands have lost this kind of cash from one bad campaign. Has anyone else looked into the actual numbers behind these fails?
I used to write these long, lawyer-y responses whenever my side hustle messaged wrong orders, thinking it covered us. After seeing how Shake Shack handled that whole wrong order blowup back in March by just saying 'we messed up' with a $5 coupon, I switched to short and honest replies. Has anyone else noticed customers respond better when you skip the excuses?
So there's this indie candle company in Portland called Flick & Wick that had maybe 2,000 followers. The owner, Sarah, thought it'd be a good idea to reply to every negative review with a funny gif to seem relatable. It worked for about a week until someone screenshot a reply where she used a gif of a crying baby on a 1-star review about a candle that smelled like burnt hair. People started digging and found like 30 more examples where the tone was totally off. Now she's got a mob of people calling her out for being snarky and she posted an apology video that's just her crying for 4 minutes. Which side do you land on here - is trying to be funny a good way to humanize your brand, or should businesses just stick to dry, professional responses no matter what?
Honestly, I used to think the whole snarky brand voice was genius until I saw the Wendy's account roast a kid for asking about a free frosty last month. I was scrolling through my feed at a Starbucks in Austin and the reply was so brutal it got quoted on the news. The backlash came in like 2 hours and they had to delete the tweet and apologize. Has anyone else noticed brands going too far with the jokes and then scrambling to fix it?
I used to think brand boycotts were pointless, just noise that fades in a week. But watching Bud Light lose like $27 billion in market value over that Dylan Mulvaney thing last year changed my mind. People actually stuck to it, and I saw bars near me in Cleveland switch taps because of customer pressure. Has anyone else here had a boycott actually work on a brand you thought was too big to care?
Some guy named Derek from a paid webinar swore up and down that posting frequency was the key. I tried it for two weeks. Lost 200 followers. My reach dropped by half. He never mentioned that it only works if you have a content team. I run a small soap business from my kitchen. Now I'm back to posting once every other day and people are actually liking stuff again. Has anyone else been burned by advice from one of those social media experts?
Last spring, a local car dealership here in Portland put up a giant digital billboard that was supposed to say 'Summer Sale Event' but instead it read 'Sumer Sale Even' for a full 48 hours. I drive past it on my way to night shifts and watched people post photos online making fun of it for two days straight. The funny part is, they finally fixed it but never apologized or acknowledged the typo anywhere, just acted like nothing happened. Has anyone else noticed brands just ignoring their own mistakes and hoping we forget?