We think PR is an art form! And when it goes wrong, it goes horribly wrong?

Ah, PR. When it’s done right, it can subtly spotlight your business with the craft and ease of that friend who has just had a baby somehow manoeuvring every conversation around to the best way to put on a baby-grow.

When it misses the mark, though, it really can create some cringe-so-hard-you-look-through-your-fingers moments. They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but these 5 examples offer a convincing argument to the contrary?

Not Much Cop

Let’s start with an obvious one.That Pepsi advert, featuring Kendall Jenner being tempted away from her important modelling shoot and into a mass protest, sparked a huge backlash. Aired at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests across the US, many thought that the ad, which concludes with Jenner effectively quelling the unrest by handing a Pepsi to a smiling policeman, trivialised the campaign for social change.

The scale of the public outrage is perhaps best understood when you find out that Bernice King, daughter of the great Martin Luther King Jr., Tweeted her scathing response to the campaign alongside a photo of her father being confronted by a police officer. “If only daddy would have known about the power of Pepsi.” she wrote. Now that is a PR nightmare if we ever saw one.

A Mistake to Run Away From

Keen not to let Pepsi dominant the ‘lack of social awareness’ market, Adidas quickly chipped in with their own poor taste PR move not long after. Intended to congratulate runners on their achievement, those on Adidas’ mailing list received a heartfelt email with the subject line “Congratulations, you survived the Boston marathon!”

With the 2013 Boston marathon bombing still fresh in the minds of many people, this was immeasurably poor wording. How this managed to get signed off is anyone’s guess.

Not ‘How We Do’ PR

Cast your mind back to 2014. Germany are warming up ready to break some Brazilian hearts, you can confidently say the word ‘Alexa’ without awakening any of your appliances, and Rita Ora is about to make one of the most cringeworthy PR blunders of recent times.

Attempting to crack the American market, Rita put out a Tweet promising to “drop my new song Monday if this gets 10,000 retweets.” Yeah, you guessed it, that didn’t happen. Instead of smoothing that one over with a “hahaha-I-want-to-die-but-it’s-cool”, Rita behaved with all the dignity and grace of a drunken dad at a wedding, claiming that her account had been ‘hacked’ to post the Tweet. Right. Sure.

A reminder for us all that social media can be both friend and foe in your PR campaign.

Walkers Score an Own Goal

Okay, so this is your classic lesson of “don’t trust the public with nice things”. Sticking with the theme of social media faux pas, Walkers created a would-be adorable interactive campaign, in which users were invited to submit their finest selfies for Mr Walkers himself Gary Lineker to hold up, before cutting to ‘you’ performing a Mexican wave. Fine. Lovely.

But inevitably, the same British public who named a cutting edge polar research vessel ‘Boaty McBoatface’ saw the opportunity for carnage and didn’t let it pass unnoticed. Without a filtering algorithm, Lineker was soon found holding up ‘selfies’ of the likes of Fred West and Jimmy Saville. I’d be willing to bet that when that campaign was dreamed up, seeing Joseph Stalin’s faced superimposed on a football fan doing the Mexican wave wasn’t the intended outcome

Valentine’s Day Campaigns to Fall Out of Love With

This is one of those that makes you say “really?” Hard as it is to believe, yes, this was a real PR campaign. Ahead of Valentine’s Day, the marketing team at London’s Dungeons decided to invoke the spirit of romance by, erm, linking it to Jack the Ripper. You know, the guy famous for brutally murdering prostitutes.

In a jaw-droppingly sexist campaign, London Dungeon’s social media feeds were peppered with images branded with messages such as “What’s the difference between your job and a dead prostitute? Your job still sucks!”

Unsurprisingly, the reaction on social media was on the colder side of frosty, and the posts were soon taken down. However, the ‘apology’ – a single post of “We’re sorry” posted in the same style as the originals – screamed lack of remorse and did little to negate the backlash. Come on guys, read the room…