5 Christmas reputation fails: geopolitics, alcohol and sexism

The brands must be careful about massive advertising campaigns during the highly sensitive Christmas and New Year holidays. However, marketing miscalculations and consumers' specific views of the world can cause reputational scandals even where they shouldn't have happened.

Sergii Bidenko, Reputation and Crisis advisor, have prepared five examples of reputation crises that happened to well-known brands at Christmas.

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Geopolitical colours

Marks & Spencer launched its latest Christmas advertising campaign back in November 2023. Not everyone likes Christmas decorations in the form of festive caps, cards or crafts.

And that would be fine if one of the shots didn't show three paper caps in red, silver and green burning in the fireplace. Some users saw the similarity of the colours to the Palestinian flag. This caused a storm of negative publicity for the brand, as the timing of the campaign coincided with the height of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. In addition, another shot showed Sophie Ellis Baxter with bright blue eye makeup, looking at a flame, which users interpreted as the brand's open support for Israel.

Marks & Spencer apologised on social media for the footage and assured that it was not intended to offend anyone and that the campaign was shot in the summer.

However, there were also a lot of negative comments under other posts from people who thought that the brand had missed the point of the campaign, as most people still love these Christmas baubles and don't understand the point of the advert.

In this case, we can see how the brand tried to play on established traditions and stereotypes in its Christmas advert but offended its users through non-obvious symbols that are sensitive to them.

Sports sexism

Another example of a reputational crisis due to an advert that caused a flurry of negative feedback due to discrimination and sexism is the Peloton brand, which released a Christmas advert in which a man gives his wife a Peloton exercise bike.

Many users were outraged by the fact that the woman in the advert was in great shape and such a gift looked like a man's attempt to humiliate a woman. She should be grateful for it, so the brand was accused of sexism and discrimination against women.

The video caused the company's shares to fall by 9%. Peloton said it regretted that the advert was misunderstood, but this did not stop the crisis and the fall in shares.

The protagonist of the advert was also criticised and later had to comment that he did not look like his character and was not an abuser.

But the leading actress was fortunate because, after this scandal, she was invited to star in an advert for Ryan Reynolds' Aviation gin, which referred to the actress's previous work.

Non-toy terrorism

During the Christmas season, store shelves are overflowing with toys. Everyone wants to decorate their homes and make their families feel festive, but unfortunately, not all products can bring this mood.

For example, the Australian retailer Kmart was forced to withdraw a Christmas decoration from sale after many complaints that the product supported terrorism. The thing is that the decoration was in the form of a bag for storing various trinkets with the inscription "Merry HAM-MAS", which meant "Merry Christmas", but due to the design feature, the text read as "Hamas," i.e. the name of the terrorist group.

This decoration caused a heated discussion online, and Kmart representatives had to respond immediately. They apologised for it in a statement: "This time we made a mistake and we apologise. We didn't consider all the implications when we designed this product, and the product has been removed from sale."

Christmas greetings from a prisoner

It often happens that when you buy an item, you find something inside that is not what you expected to see. In this case, either the manufacturers of the goods or the sellers take responsibility for the discovery to whitewash their reputation.

A similar story happened in 2019 in London. A six-year-old British girl bought Christmas cards at a well-known Tesco supermarket to write greetings to her friends. However, she later saw that one of the cards had already been filled in.

The note that Florence Widdicombe (the girl's name) found was allegedly written by prisoners in Shanghai who asked for help and claimed that they were forced to work against their will. In addition, the text asked them to contact Peter Humphrey, a British journalist imprisoned there four years earlier, to confirm the information they had written.

After the discovery was made public, Tesco representatives immediately stated: "We were shocked by these findings and immediately stopped production at the factory where these leaflets are made and launched an investigation."

In addition, they assured us that they have an audit system that checks suppliers for forced labour.

The factory had been inspected a month before the incident, and no evidence was found that it violated the ban on prisoner labour.

Thanks to the quick response of Tesco representatives, no significant damage was done to the brand's reputation, although many questions remained.

Alcohol that ignited a reputational fire

In Christmas advertising campaigns, you can often see friends with a glass of sparkling wine celebrating and having a good time together, and this is a standard practice in such advertising because almost everyone can see themselves in this situation, the main thing to remember is not to advertise alcohol to children and not to encourage people who do not expect it, otherwise, hello reputation crisis.

For the 2015 Christmas holidays, the well-known US shopping centre Bloomingdale's published a poster for Rebecca Minkoff in its catalogue. The image showed a festively dressed woman laughing merrily and a man in a suit looking at her. And everything would be fine if not for the text between them: "Spike your best friend’s eggnog when they’re not looking".

The backlash on social media was swift. Twitter was flooded with thousands of messages that Bloomingdale's was promoting violence, as such a message could be seen as a call to action to get your friends drunk for your benefit.

A short time later, representatives of the department store issued an apology: "Based on recent feedback, the advert we used in our latest catalogue was inappropriate. Bloomingdale's sincerely apologises for this mistake. As this advert has already been printed, we cannot cancel it."

Of course, this statement did not satisfy society, and the hate continued to pour on social media. “It’s an example of a marketer being out of tune with the values of the audience,” Tessa Jolls, president of the Center for Media Literacy, tells The Christian Science Monitor.

And given that the hashtag #NotBuyingIt by the anti-sexist group The Representation Project forced adjustments even to the Super Bowl advert, the consequences of this failure for Bloomingdale's were serious.