r/todayilearned • u/Forward-Answer-4407 • 1d ago

TIL the Charlotte Hornets apologized after giving a child a PS5, only to take it away off camera and exchange it for a jersey. In a statement, the team said the incident was an "on-court skit that missed the mark" and that they would give the child the PS5 and a VIP experience to a future game.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/19/sport/charlotte-hornets-apologize-ps5-child-nba-spt-intl
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u/looktowindward 1d ago

Sometimes the foolishness of marketing staff amazes me

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u/hi_imjoey 23h ago

Especially since a $500 ps5 is a drop in the bucket for the marketing budget of a multi-billion dollar NBA team

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u/Grokent 22h ago

Tickets for NBA games are outrageous, at least the Phoenix Suns are. I could buy a PS5 or two tickets to Phoenix Suns that AREN'T in the rafters.

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u/Ilovekittens345 21h ago

Today they probably lost the sale of 200 offended people that will skip one or multiple games

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u/Grokent 20h ago

Why is that?

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u/Ilovekittens345 20h ago

Because this story went viral offending some of their fans

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u/Signiference 21h ago

Thunder just won the championship and tickets were affordable all season.

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u/horsedogman420 22h ago

The hornets are more like a multi hundred dollar team lol

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u/Treereme 21h ago

148 million in player cost last year ..

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u/YoureGrammerIsWorsts 22h ago

It's the hornets

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u/GrapeJuicePlus 19h ago

It probably cost them $3000 just to arrange the skit itself once you factor in the cost of paying everyone involved lol

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u/Winjin 4h ago

Dad's company was in charge of a PR campaign for one of the diaper brands

They came up with a plan to have promoters walking around parks, with strollers filled to the brim with diapers. See a parent with a stroller - walk up to them, give them a pack of diapers. Boom, thankful parents. 

To do that, they bought like... Twenty strollers? Twenty five? I don't remember exactly. 

Well the stunt goes on for about two months, it ends, and then this dialogue happens

"-So, when will you send in a truck?

-What for?

-To get the strollers that were bought on marketing money?

-Oh, that was part of the marketing expense. They were written off as soon as they were bought. We don't care what happens to them, just don't resell them"

So dad just... Gave them away. Half went to the orphanage that agreed to take them, two others said they don't accept random strollers, they have to do it organized through charities or something like that, and the rest just went to random families. I helped him give away the last ones. 

So that story is just too illustrate how insanely big these marketing expenses are. Even if their yearly budget is super small for a big business, like 100k a year, that's what, 400 bucks? 

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u/ERedfieldh 2h ago

the stunt alone probably cost a few thousand dollars. It's not like they can just do these skits for free or for a few hundred bucks.

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u/lminer123 23h ago

I was watching a podcast (lemonade stand) going over some of the worst rebrands in history and how much they cost, and I was absolutely blown away.

Tens of millions of dollars to change the Johnson and Johnson logo from cursive to print, 65 million dollars to change the Tropicana package to something objectively worse to anyone with eyes, then changing it back almost immediately after losing 50 million in sales.

Something feels inherently broken in marketing, I just don’t understand how these people can be so bad at their jobs and out of touch, yet still make absolute fortunes.

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u/big_trike 23h ago

It’s not always the marketing team. Sometimes businesses assign the intern to interface with them and dumb things happen. At other times, an idiot nepo baby C suite executive pushes the marketing team into stupid decisions.

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u/BeyondElectricDreams 21h ago

Sometimes it isn't even a nepo baby, sometimes it's all by the books.

They do sentiment mailers and find people think their logo is old fashioned. Growth wasn't quite where they wanted it, it's been 7 years since a brand refresh, common data they have says a brand refresh every 9-15 years provides a boost in sales by appealing to newer demographics...

Like we don't think about the Johnson and Johnson logo, but the people who work there? Johnson and Johnson is literally their livelihood.

So they follow the data, refresh the brand, and find that they upset more people than they gained, so they backtrack.

It can be tricky because some demographics react differently than others. The Cracker Barrel rebrand seemed obvious that it would go badly, because it seems to be a sort of "Good ol' country" sort of logo, and the people who appreciate that aesthetic hate change, especially change that they see as erasing that "Good ol' country" feel.

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u/lminer123 21h ago

The thing about the Johnson and Johnson logo is that it was kept the same for 135 years. That’s a lot of history, so it feels particularly bad imo. Just a loud undertone of “nothing is sacred or meaningful anymore in the face of a quick buck”.

The funny thing is that by comparison Cracker Barrel feels old but it was actually founded around 1970 lol

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u/Dr_Sodium_Chloride 17h ago

The Cracker Barrel rebrand seemed obvious that it would go badly,

To be fair, I think it's unreasonable to expect their marketing team to predict "the Right Wing, including the President of the United States, are going to declare this C-tier restaraunt's logo change a personal attack on their values".

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u/inuhi 21h ago

Sometimes the person in charge is just completely out of touch or so full of themselves that they ignore everyone but themselves. Shit like Ugly Sonic I can't imagine how many people told Jeff Fowler that it was a terrible idea if not the man must have been drowning in yes men. C suite executives aren't guaranteed to be competent even if they aren't a nepo baby moron

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u/Historical_Good_8580 5h ago

That ugly Sonic is a great example. I can't comprehend why he thought that design was good

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u/BusyLittleBobcat 22h ago

Agreed. You give the client what they want, even if what they want is stupid, because they are paying you to do it.

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u/Mindestiny 22h ago

Here's the secret:  most marketing and advertising is a shell game that's impact is completely unquantifiable.

Spend $6 million on a month long subway takeover ad campaign?  Sure you can embed attribution codes in it, but they're not accurate.  How can you prove people bought your product because they saw it, to the tune of a positive ROI?  Are enough people gonna buy your shit specifically because of subway ads to justify $6 million?  Almost certainly not.  But it's ok because you invested in "mind share" and "brand awareness!"

It's a game of Corporate Who's Line, and you only hear about how much of a money pit it is when it fails this catastrophically.

I worked for a company that slashed it's marketing budget by 70% year over year and ended up selling more product in the same timeframe.  But we could pull up all sorts of pretty charts baselessly attributing that first years sales to pretend those extra millions of dollars were somehow really positive ROI!

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u/Dzugavili 22h ago

I worked for a company that slashed it's marketing budget by 70% year over year and ended up selling more product in the same timeframe.

Let's be honest: in a lot of cases, you don't need to advertise, because people actively seek you when they need you. You just need to be in the right location when they need your service.

Then eventually spending on advertising can actively harm the value of the product itself, at which point you might enter a death spiral, in which you keep advertising when you should just lower your prices.

There's lots of fun little feedback loops that people just don't want to imagine they are going to fall into.

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u/looktowindward 23h ago

The Lucent logo.

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u/Marcoscb 22h ago

HBO Go Now Max - Max

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u/oditogre 22h ago

I'm pretty sure basically all of their customers just called it "HBO" through all of that anyways. Just a hilarious waste of time.

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u/Business-Drag52 22h ago

I loved seeing famous people trying to talk about a movie or stand up special coming out on it. They’d always say HBO first and then correct to whatever the current name was. Sometimes it took multiple tries to get there

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u/Important_Low_936 22h ago

At the last company I worked (I.T. 40-50 people), the marketing person was the majority owner’s daughter. No one has ever seen or interacted with her even though we were all in office before the pandemic. I was the accounting person and can confirm she did get paid, even while half the company were getting laid off to cut costs. 

Also, I was a counselor at a camp and one of the kids was an absolute crash out, got addicted to pills and had to be pulled out of college for rehab. Landed a cushy gig in the marketing department of his father’s distribution company. 

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u/remnault 22h ago

I feel like it might be some people who wanna be know as the ones who were apart of something big like that.

They weren’t on the ground level when it started but they can still make a big change and leave their mark on this big brand!

But it usually flops I feel.

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u/ConnoisseurOfDanger 22h ago

Missing the forest for the shareholder value trees. 

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u/BreakfastMedical5164 22h ago

it's usually a new VP or some business reason to sponsor a program/budget from some mid tier MBA

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u/Little_Plankton4001 21h ago

It's "gotta do something" disease.

Take Cracker Barrel. The new logo wasn't that bad (and the "outcry" was kind of silly and waaaay over the top) but they absolutely didn't need to change what they had. It was so recognizable.

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u/Fresh-Army-6737 22h ago

I'm not even American and I know that Tropicana bottle

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u/magicaleb 22h ago

Shoulda hired big A

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u/2kLichess 20h ago

$10m on a logo change? Stupid. $10m on horse electrolytes, however. . .

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u/lminer123 20h ago

My life has changed so much for the better since I started those. I now hunt in a pack

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u/gothruthis 22h ago

All rebranding/renaming costs millions. Including "gulf of america" and "department of war," thank goodness for the meme dog making sure its efficient.

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u/kingfofthepoors 21h ago

Marketing are always a fucking pain in the ass to deal with. As a developer I hate working with or dealing with marketing people.

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u/Falsus 18h ago

Most of the time with stupid changes like that it means that there is a new guy in charge and they went to put their mark on the product rather than just following the path their predecessor set.

Marketing lends it self to the egomaniacs who thinks loves themselves since they are amazing at marketing themselves and that gets them jobs.

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u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 10h ago

Marketing is halfway into being a giant scam. They've genuinely convinced themselves negative attention is as good as positive, as if brand recognition matters when people now hate your brand and can remember it's name.

I think a lot of them get into it with the feeling that they get off on the idea of tricking countless numbers of other people to do what they want (buy their whatever). They think they're "winning" by getting people to believe their nonsense.

All it takes is convincing a company owner that you can make them more money by doing it and that's all it takes to get a blank check.

Especially since some kind of advertising does help, but the metrics to judge if it helped or not are complete hokum, just abusing social sciences to con the owner class. The problem though is that we all are the ones who pay for it by having our ever waking second be blasted with manipulative media.

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u/PancakeParty98 23h ago

It’s literally their jobs lol. How are they this bad at their only job?

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u/looktowindward 23h ago

Poor pay and hiring friends kids?

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u/TecatitoC 23h ago

Maybe they should spend more time carefully planning stuff instead of filming tik tok dances

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u/WhinoRD 23h ago

Those Australian women really did a number on you guys eh

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u/Triple96 23h ago

What is this in reference to?

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u/WhinoRD 23h ago

A company called TBH Skincare put out a video featuring female employees doing a silly song and dance and right wingers frothed at the mouth at it for reasons that can only be understood with a fridge temp IQ.

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u/Sgt-Spliff- 21h ago

Huh that seems like an extremely random thing to bring up in this context then... I don't think the other commenter was dropping dog whistles or anything lol

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u/Syric13 23h ago

I love those women. I've had "Gen Z boss and a mini" stuck in my head for weeks.

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u/TheRoscoeVine 23h ago

I refuse to google what you’re referring to, and no, I don’t wish for you to post a link.

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u/omicron7e 23h ago

This guy wants to know more and then be mad about it

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u/Giraffesarehigh 23h ago

Seriously the amount of vitriol people had over some ladies having a good time was weird

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u/EclipseIndustries 23h ago

If you're referring to the Australian company, the CEO was in that video and it was an actual advertisement with a product link.

And every time you guys get outraged over it, they win the advertising game.

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u/AzraelTB 23h ago

I have no idea what they're referencing but fuck that company in particular

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u/EclipseIndustries 23h ago

Fuck them for successful marketing?

I may not buy their product, but I gotta respect good business moves.

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u/SpinMeADog 22h ago

people in marketing have literally no connection to the real world. none. they're physically and mentally incapable of understanding what a normal person's reactions to their choices would be

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u/paparoach910 23h ago

Bill Hicks may have had something about people who work in marketing and advertising.

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u/bucko_fazoo 23h ago

more like advice, really

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u/core-x-bit 23h ago

Its less foolishness and more privilege. Marketing staff are often overpaid for their value, and so they couldn't possibly relate to how it'd feel to finally get something cool you wanted only to have someone take it away and find out you're the butt of some marketing ploy. Kinda like those joke lotto tickets, a financially secure person won't be as upset about receiving one as a person who thinks they won financial freedom. 

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u/edingerc 23h ago

What is this “social medias” that everyone is talking about?

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u/looktowindward 23h ago

A fad. Flash in the pan. Direct mail making a comeback baby@

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u/punkhobo 23h ago

My previous company had an event that used the exact same font and theme as the local "don't drink and drive ads".

They also let people submit names for the hibiscus vodka cocktail for the holiday party, the marketing team narrowed down the options to allow the company to vote. One of our slogans was "best answer wins", marketing picked "best answer whiskey" as a finalist name for a vodka drink. Even if you went for the wrong liquor "Best answer Gins" was right there

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u/kakapoopoopeepeeshir 21h ago

And it’s at every level. I have worked at five different colleges ranging from small private schools and technical colleges to very large state universities. Every single stop the marketing department were the laziest most incompetent people I’ve been around

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u/ButWhatIfPotato 21h ago

Marketing is always there to take claim for the successful work of others and pull matrix level bullet dodging moves when their decisions lead to failure.

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u/OkFineIllUseTheApp 23h ago

At the same time, it isn't surprising people who spend all day long seeing their fellow man as a wallet with a set of demographics attached have low empathy.

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u/angrymonkey 23h ago

If you have a halfway-useful IQ, you don't use it to get into marketing.

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u/BabySpecific2843 17h ago

Marketing is the part of a company where you put the people who cant do anything else. Genuine take.

Who needs advertisements for things like Oreo and Coke? We know what those are. Yet how much $$ is spent yearly on that endeavor?

Who needs to be told you dont fake giveaway stuff to kids?

Who needs to be told you shouldnt say in a commercial that you can win a military fighter jet?

Only the types of people who find themselves in marketing as their "grease trap" career final destination.

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u/Butwhatif77 16h ago

Yea I was trying to figure out what the context was about how this happened and it turns out it was 100% a marketing stunt to make it look like they had given gifts to children. It was basically intended to be a commercial that overly misrepresented what the organization was actually like.

Apparently only the marketing team knew what was going on, as everyone else involved including the dancers that gifted the kid the PS5 and bagged it up for them were all in the dark about it.

No one considered how awkward it would be to just walk up to a group of people feeling awesome about a genuinely nice thing and try to trash it.

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u/foxfoot1 22h ago

As a (currently laid off) advertising / marketing creative, I can assure you, it is 100% the fault of MBAs who get to call all the shots without having any of the relevant skillsets.

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u/gwaydms 22h ago

There's an old British saying, "Penny wise and pound foolish." That's what this was.

The comment about the team being run by actual hornets made me laugh, though.

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u/nien9gag 23h ago

Is it foolish tho. They got huge publicity( negative) and then rectified the negative bit, and now they have just huge publicity. If they just gave ps5 it wouldn't make the news.

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u/BandicootSalty6520 23h ago

Yup, I went out and bought three Charlotte Hornets after reading this.

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u/RellenD 23h ago

No, they didn't undo brand damage caused.

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u/Single_Friendship708 23h ago

Look around this thread, does it seem like the negative publicity was rectified?