Marketing Crisis: Cristiano Ronaldo vs. Coca-Cola
Even before playing the match between Portugal and Hungary, Cristiano Ronaldo left everyone speechless. In the press conference before the match, he decided to take out two bottles of Coca-Cola and put a water bottle instead, in front of all the cameras.
This made the cola company lose millions of dollars in just a couple of hours. Giving birth to the latest and most mediatic marketing crisis.
The Result
How much can a mistake cost you in your job? A little? A huge fortune? Well, this cost Coca-Cola an estimate of 3.967 million dollars loss on Wall Street.
And even though it started recovering in a matter of days, this was a significant blow to their balance.
Also, different football players joined Cristiano Ronaldo. For example, the Italian star Locatelli or the french midfielder Paul Pogba. Instead of retiring the Coca-Cola bottles, he removed a beer bottle of Heineken.
On the other hand, Russian coach Stanislav Cherchesov joined the controversy differently. He just drank the Coke-Cola.
Trolls
Besides the economic blow, the Portuguese also exposed the cola brand to merciless trolls.
Other Famous Marketing Crisis
McDonald’s – ***Need Copy and Link***
For a community manager, scheduling a tweet is something easy. However, it’s really important to know what’s going to be scheduled.
McDonald’s didn’t consider this one time. When Black Friday of 2017 was arriving, the burger company shared an empty tweet that only had “***Need Copy And Link***” inside.
This generated an avalanche of trolling tweets.
Although the damage was done, McDonald’s used this opportunity to recover and advertise one of its products.
Nutella – #MyNutella
One of the sweetest and most delicious desserts in the world suffered the bitter sarcasm of trolls in 2020.
Nutella created an ad campaign that invited users to personalize the labels of their products with #MyNutella.
This started with the right foot. However, it started coming down in flames when users created labels joking with obesity, diabetes, and even homophobic messages. That’s why the brand had to take down its campaign.
KFC – FCK
We tip our hats to this comeback.
It’s almost impossible to not know KFC. A brand famous both for their chickens and the emblematic Colonel Sanders figure. However, in 2018, it also became famous for its UK crisis. They ran out of chicken. Yes, just what you read.
This provoked thousands of trolls that started flooding social media with criticism.
KFC responded with a clever response. An apology statement accepting their mistake with a word pun.
“We’re sorry.
A chicken restaurant without any chicken. It’s not ideal. Huge apologies to our customers, especially those who traveled out of their way to find we were closed. And endless thanks to our KFC team members and our franchise partners for working tirelessly to improve the situation. It’s been a hell of a week, but we’re making progress, and every day more and more fresh chicken is being delivered to our restaurants. Thank you for bearing with us.”
Gillette – #BoycottGillette
We live in a very complex time. A world of changes.
Gillette, a brand associated with the male market, decided in 2019 to change their historical claim. They came up with “The best men can be” and advertised it with this short.
Although the idea was to invite people to reflect on toxic masculinity, it got misinterpreted. A lot of people understood it as a sexist attack on men. This made many of their clients start a world boycott of the brand.
In the end, Gillette lost a ton of money.
As you can see, a crisis can be a really hard blow to any company. And even though it’s impossible to know when and what will happen, you should be prepared for any eventuality. That’s why, among other things, it’s vital to have a communication manual. If you want to know how to come up with one, you should read this article.
Do you remember another marketing crisis such as these? Leave it in the comment section.
