18th Article published today (11th October 2014) in The HANS INDIA. The
article has come out very nicely. It is titled "World's best (worst)
Goof Ups - Part II".
E-Version of the article
World’s best (worst) goof ups – part II
October 11,2014, 03.02 AM IST | Dr M Anil Ramesh
SiloUSA a discount appliance
chain, had too many stereos in stock and wanted to sell them at
shockingly low prices. They ran advertisements saying, “it costs only
299 bananas for a new stereo”. Obviously according to Silo "bananas"
means "dollars". This was pure slang and many Americans themselves were
not aware of this fact. Calling dollars as bananas was popular during
the presidency of Calvin Coolidge.
Dozens of customers flocked to stores
with literally 299 bananas (worth about $40). The appliance store had no
choice but to accept all the bananas from dozens of customers. Silo
lost over $10,000 in just one day, pulling in the advertisements of the
next day before other customers could get the same idea. Silo couldn’t
even get rid of the bananas (they had thousands of them) as the local
zoos stopped taking them (1986).
Cartoon Network USA:
launched a marketing campaign in which they set up LED signs in various
places throughout cities in USA to promote one of their cartoons. A
resident in Boston, however, thought the devices were bombs and called
the police. This turned into a terrorism scare, resulting in the
shut-down of many public transportation lines, bridges, and roads. The
problem cost the head of Cartoon Network his job and the broadcasting
company $2 million in compensation for the emergency response
team(2007).
KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) USA decided
to promote its new grilled chicken by giving it away for free. Wanting
to keep their promotion subtle and discreet, they did the announcement
on the show of Oprah Winfrey.
KFC underestimated the influence of
Oprah who told the viewers that they could print out a voucher for free
lunch at KFC on the May 5 episode of her talk show.
Approximately 16 million people printed
out the Winfrey approved coupon and showed up at KFCs nationwide to have
their free chicken. The fast food chain was unprepared and ran out of
stock before lunchtime. KFC’s market research team had suggested that
the average US citizen doesn’t like chicken and that he hates not having
to pay for things.
Angry customers in New York, responded
by starting mini riots and sit-ins. Managers at some locations did
damage control by telling customers they couldn't accept any coupons
ending with the serial numbers ‘1234’, which incidentally consisted of
every PDF copy of the coupon in existence. KFC president Roger Eaton
tried to win back customer confidence by issuing a public statement, but
the damage had been already been done (2009).
Railway advertisement shows Delhi in Pakistan:
The advertisement, announcing the inauguration of a luxury tourist
train, the Kolkata - Nalanda Maharaja Express by the then railway
minister Mamata Banerjee, contained an erroneous map.
This is what the map showed - New Delhi
is no more India’s capital. It had become part of Pakistan. Varanasi is
now a part of Orissa. Kolkata and Gaya are two islands in the Bay of
Bengal, and the north Indian city of Gwalior is now a part of
Maharashtra. (March 2010).
Karnataka advertisement stars farmer who
committed suicide: A farmer shown in a Karnataka Shining advertisement
had committed suicide after he failed to repay his loans. The
advertisement has a smiling farmer singing praises of the Yeddyurappa
government. But the truth was that the farmer, Nagaraju from Mandya
district had committed suicide as he couldn't pay off his debts(Dec
2010).
SM Krishna reads Portuguese minister's
speech at United Nations, Washington: India’s then external affairs
minister SM Krishna, inadvertently read out the speech of the Portuguese
foreign minister at a UN meeting. He realised his mistake a couple of
minutes into his speech and went on to read the correct speech but the
damage was done (Feb 2011).
Pakistan Navy goofs up:
An advertisement issued by the Pakistan Navy for a multi-national
exercise prominently featured images of Indian Navy warships even though
India is not among the countries participating in the manoeuvres being
held in the Arabian Sea.
The full-page advertisement for the
Aman-11 exercise, which appeared in The Nation and Nawa-e-Waqt
newspapers, featured images of the Indian Navy's Delhi, Godavari and
Talwarclass warships under the slogan: “Together for peace”. (March
2011).
New Delhi: Delhi's
state government put out an advertising campaign on the occasion of
World Sparrow Day. The advertisement carried a picture of the ‘Eurasian
tree sparrow’, which is neither found in Delhi nor in most parts of
India, mistaking it for the ‘Indian house sparrow’.
The picture had been downloaded from the
internet and while the environment department officials accepted the
error, they said the idea was to depict a sparrow which is what the
advertisement did (March 2013).
Big OOPS by Macy’s: A
catalogue of Macy’s that was mailed to customers had quite a bargain.
The advertisement listed a $1,500 sterling silver and 14-karat gold
necklace for just $ 47. The advertisement was supposed to be $479, but a
copy editor left off the “9″. Dozens of customers showed up at a Macy’s
store to snap up the deal before Macy’s caught the mistake and put up
signs saying there had been an error! (April 2013).
Google goofs up, shows PoK (Pakistan
Occupied Kashmir) as Pakistan: Google Insights of Search shows the
Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir as a part of Pakistan. (Nov 2013).
Following this, the Government of India
issued a notice to the internet giant Google for the same. "Any
wrongful depiction of Indian map and its boundaries is liable for action
under the India Information Technology Act. Google was asked to
immediately correct this inaccuracy by the Sachin Pilot, the then
Minister of state for telecom and IT.
RBI goofs up, puts invalid notes in circulation:
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued currency notes carrying the
signature of its former governor D Subbarao, who retired in 2013.
Amid reports of goof-up in printing of
notes, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said that the new notes bearing
signature of former Governor D Subbarao are legal tender and the process
of changing signature was underway. (March 2014).
France’s Train operator SNCF:
landed itself in a mess. Its new trains delivered by Bombardier proved
to be a major goof up. The trains that were delivered were too wide to
be used in the existing network of platforms. SNCF has ordered 200 new
trains at an astounding value of over twenty billion dollars (over
120,000 crore Indian rupees).
The rail operator RFF calculated the
dimensions and gave it to SNCF who passed it on to Bombardier. RFF made
all calculations based on platforms made 30 years ago where as in
reality France still has many platforms made over 50 years ago. SNCF
will have to spend over 68.4 million US dollars as it will have to
redesign the existing platforms. In all over 1000 platforms will have to
redesigned. (May 2014).
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