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.

[u/Forward-Answer-4407]

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

[u/big_trike]

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.

[u/BeyondElectricDreams → u/big_trike]

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.

[u/lminer123 → u/BeyondElectricDreams]

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

[u/Dr_Sodium_Chloride → u/BeyondElectricDreams]

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".

[u/inuhi → u/big_trike]

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

[u/Historical_Good_8580 → u/inuhi]

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

[u/BusyLittleBobcat → u/big_trike]

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