Seek to Misconstrue + a
Failure: The Blog 
May 2012
April 2012
- [VIDEO] Harrison and the Diving Board
- The Tasty Failure of Oranges
- What's in a Band Name
- The Upside of Being Dishonest
- A Case For Failing
- From Broke to Multimillionare
March 2012
- [VIDEO] The Most Famous, Unused Poster
- How Angry Birds Became Successful
- Vendor Says: Failure Is a Huge Success
- Winning the Rejection Game
- Fred Astaire on Making Mistakes
- Roundoff Error: Failure and Success
- [VIDEO] Dr. Kate on Failure
February 2012
- Where The Sun will Finally Shine
- Use Errors, Make Training Efficient
- Unfinished, But Inhabited
- The Success of Failure, via CNN
- Einstein Actually Had Excellent Grades
- The Physics of Discarded Paper
- The Power of Failing
January 2012
- Offensive Advertising, Increased Sales?
- I Sold Out For Millions, Then Worked At McDonald's
- Steve Jobs on Failure
- The Famous Western Failure
- Thank Goodness for Drug Addicts
December 2011
Offensive Advertising, Increased Sales?
A gym in the megacity of Dubai recently ran a horrifyingly offensive advertisement. They realized the error of their ways and canned their creative director, but now the exercise facility is more popular than ever.
The story is covered in a
blog post from DietsInReview.com. They write:
What do a gym and the Holocaust have in common? According to at the Circuit Factory, a gym in Dubai, they are both a great place to burn calories.
Whoa, wait a second! That’s incredibly insensitive and not funny. However, that did not stop the company’s marketing team from posting pictures of Auschwitz, a famous Nazi death camp in Poland, with the words “Kiss your calories goodbye” on their Facebook page. Around 3,000,000 people died at Auschwitz during World War II.
Let’s take a look at that advertisement:
That is truly terrible. The company pulled the ad, fired the person responsible, and apologized in full. But what happened next is the real shocker:
It seems that a negative advertising campaign like this would be the downfall of a young company like the Circuit Factory, which has only been in business for about seven months. However, in an unexpected turn of events, the Circuit Factory has reported that it has had an increase in bookings and visits to its social media websites after the images were released.
“A huge number [of] people have researched or Googled [it],” said [gym manager] Phil Parkinson. “Our YouTube channel has shot up, our [Facebook] group page has got an hundred extra members in minutes and we have had about five times as many inquiries as before. It has got to the point I am nervous that I can’t cater for demand.
So let’s be clear here: Failure is the secret to success. Yes, they never should have run this ad. Everyone agrees that it’s insensitive and inappropriate.
Yet, the popularity has also been good for business. So why you probably should not run a shock campaign, sometimes doing the wrong thing turns out for the best! Failure often leads right to success, and it’s often unexpected.
Thanks to reader Brooke Randoplh for this story.
