Writer and philosopher George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” That, apparently, is a lesson that many of our biggest PR disaster repeat offenders – Uber, Facebook and Kanye West, among others – took to heart. They have avoided this year’s list, and instead we have a group of first-time contenders for the year’s biggest PR disasters.
OCEANGATE SUBMERSIBLE
OceanGate was a boot-strapped submersible tour company, and that should have been enough to scare off most people. Somehow, however, the company developed credibility-building partnerships over the past decade with NASA and the University of Washington. It wasn’t until June, though, that most people heard of the company, when the world watched as rescuers frantically attempted to locate and save five people aboard an OceanGate submersible bound for the wreckage of the Titanic. Unfortunately, the sub had imploded before it even made it to the ocean floor. The debris field was finally discovered five days after it launched, and the rescue mission was changed to a recovery effort.
FORMER UPENN PRESIDENT ELIZABETH MAGILL
University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill prepared for a congressional hearing about the university’s response to antisemitism on campus with the help of $1,500 per hour attorneys instead of $500 per hour PR professionals, and the result was a debacle so bad that she was forced to resign. Responses that work in a court of law don’t always translate to the court of public opinion.
SCOTT ADAMS/”DILBERT”
No one captured the spirit of Corporate America better than Scott Adams and his comic strip, “Dilbert.” At its peak, the strip appeared in more than 2,000 newspapers and it even spawned a short-lived “Dilbert” TV show in 1999. Around, oh, I don’t know, maybe 2016, Adams began going down the rabbit holes of conspiracy theories.
In February, Adams set the “Dilbert” industrial complex completely ablaze with racist comments on his YouTube channel. He said, in part, “… I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people, just get the (expletive) away …” In response, The Denver Post joined hundreds of other newspapers in dropping “Dilbert” – a move Adams said would mean that “most of my income will be gone by next week” and “my reputation for the rest of my life is destroyed.”
BUD LIGHT
Do you remember in 2015 when Bud Light had to apologize for printing “rapey” slogans on its bottles as part of its #UpForWhatever marketing campaign? Bud Light executives probably recall those as the good old days.
In April, Bud Light cannonballed into the culture wars when it included transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in a marketing campaign. Cultural conservatives lost their minds, and they accomplished something that is very rare – a boycott that actually worked. Bud Light parent company AB InBev’s stock was downgraded from “Buy” to “Hold,” CNBC reported that the company’s sales dropped 18%, and it laid off 400 employees several months after the campaign.
PAC-12
The PAC-12 was one of the most storied athletic conferences in the country that included legendary schools such as UCLA, USC, Stanford and Oregon. It billed itself as the “Conference of Champions” and then lived up to it by winning the most NCAA titles of any conference for the past 18 consecutive seasons.
You would think it would be positioned to thrive in this eat-or-be-eaten environment of conference realignment, but it bet its existence on a game of chicken and lost. Poor strategic decisions and an ill-fated PAC-12 cable network didn’t help, but the death knell was rejecting what turned out to be a very reasonable proposal from ESPN for a new television deal. And in a flash, its seat at the Major Conference table evaporated when most of its teams fled to the Big 10, Big 12 and the ACC.
ELON MUSK/X (FORMERLY TWITTER)
There is an old joke – “How do you become a millionaire in (insert industry here)? Start with a billion dollars.” That is especially relevant for Elon Musk. He bought X, nee Twitter, for $44 billion last year, and by the second half of this year had managed to devalue it to about $19 billion thanks to erratic decisions and poor management. Most recently, it was his embrace of antisemites, and trolls like Alex Jones, that caused most mainstream advertisers – Warner Bros. Discovery, Apple, Sony and IBM, to name just a few – to finally walk away.
THREADS
With all of Twitter’s problems, it seemed the perfect time for a well-designed alternative to step up, and Meta – owner of Facebook and Instagram – did exactly that with Threads in July. It became the fastest-growing app in social media history and seemed poised to replace Twitter as the go-to news and information app. By mid-August, however, it became clear that the early momentum had faded, and usage dropped by nearly 80%.
AUON’TAI ANDERSON
Former Denver Public Schools board member Auon’tai Anderson is like a toddler who thinks he is playing chess but actually just throws the pieces at you. He was the most-visible DPS board member, and yet in April a poll found that just 9% of likely Denver voters supported his re-election. To put that in context, 13% of expelled N.Y. Rep. George Santos’ constituents still supported him.
Anderson read the political winds and quickly announced that he would not run for re-election … and instead that he would run for a Colorado House of Representatives seat. That at least postponed the embarrassment of being crushed in an election by a year.
SPAIN’S SOCCER FEDERATION
Spain won the FIFA Women’s World Cup in August, but the president of the country’s soccer federation, Luis Rubiales, stole the spotlight from the team when he forcibly kissed one of its players during the post-game celebration. He was widely condemned even by members of his own country’s government, but he refused to step down even after FIFA suspended him for 90 days. Players on the Spanish national team refused to play until Rubiales was fired, and Rubiales’ mother went on a hunger strike to protest what she said was the unfair treatment of her son. The pressure finally overwhelmed Rubiales and he resigned in September.
SPORTS ILLUSTRATED
Once-revered magazines like Sports Illustrated and Newsweek have become shells of their former selves, milked for whatever revenue can be extracted from their legacy brands. In Sports Illustrated’s case, that was especially painful this year. Earlier this fall, the magazine that was once the pinnacle of sports journalism was accused of publishing AI-generated stories that used fictitious names alleged to be reporters. Sports Illustrated’s publisher declined to comment on the allegations, but this month it fired its CEO and three other high-level executives.
HAWAIIAN ELECTRIC
Hawaiian Electric expects to face as many as 1,000 lawsuits over the devastating Maui wildfires that killed more than 100 people and caused somewhere between $3 billion and $5 billion in damages. Meanwhile, the company’s stock is down 65% from its pre-fire trading level, and its market cap is sitting at about $3.9 billion. What’s the Hawaiian word for “bankruptcy?”
CASA BONITA
In June, it was reported that new Casa Bonita owners Trey Parker and Matt Stone spent $40 million renovating the iconic restaurant. If Casa Bonita maintains standard restaurant profit margins, Parker and Stone only need to generate somewhere between $400 million and $650 million in revenue to make back their investment.
THE PGA TOUR
Where to begin? Convincing golfers such as Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy to reject literally hundreds of millions of dollars from Saudi-funded LIV Golf, only to then turn around and merge with the rival league? Spending two years making moral arguments (9/11, Jamal Khashoggi, women’s rights, etc.) against the Saudi league, only to, again, turn around and merge with it? Blindsiding its own golfers and having them learn about the merger on social media? No wonder PGA Tour players said they felt “betrayed and humiliated.”
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