At some point, back-peddling is no longer a viable damage control option. We’d say that point comes somewhere between screaming obscenities in all caps at critics via Facebook, and hurling vague threats while claiming to be a superhero backed by God himself.

Yeah, that happened.

After Gordon Ramsay of reality show “Kitchen Nightmares” declared Arizona restaurant Amy’s Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro so horrible that even he couldn’t help the owners rescue their establishment, those owners, Amy and Sammy, took to social media to bite back at critics. Here are a few of the most…um…interesting Facebook posts (if you’re offended by the F word, you should probably stop reading):

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Photo via Imgur

Fans dressing up as their favorite movie characters while attending opening weekend film showings is nothing new. However, costumed moviegoers who partnered with Capital 8 Theatres in Missouri to promote the premiere of Iron Man 3 recently caused a panic, for which the theater is now apologizing.

Had the cosplayers been dressed as Tony Stark and Pepper Potts, we imagine no one would have been particularly alarmed, but some group members donned S.H.I.E.L.D agent costumes — complete with fake firearms — which, given last year’s tragic shooting at an Aurora, CO movie theater (and the current high-alert mentality when it comes to guns), might not have been the best idea.

Moviegoers, understandably frightened by the sight of people dressed in what appeared to be body armor and carrying assault rifles, called the local police. Once the dust settled, the complaints began rolling in and the theater was skewered on social media, some even accusing Capital 8 of intentionally causing the kerfuffle as a publicity stunt. In response, the company issued the following apology:

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We always knew we didn’t belong in Abercrombie; being accosted by overpowering cologne while dodging deer antlers and shelling out a year’s worth of allowance on a sweatshirt never particularly appealed to us. But then again, we weren’t blonde, lead cheerleader, and built like, well, we usually say “an Abercrombie model”, so we were pretty sure A&F didn’t want our business anyway.

Turns out, we may have been right.

When speaking with Business Insider last week, Robin Lewis, co-author of The New Rules of Retail, claimed that A&F CEO Mike Jeffries “doesn’t want larger people shopping in his store, he wants thin and beautiful people. He doesn’t want his core customers to see people who aren’t as hot as them wearing his clothing. People who wear his clothing should feel like they’re one of the ‘cool kids.’”

So what exactly deems a kid cool enough to earn the privilege of wearing the A&F brand? In a 2006 interview with Salon, Jeffries said, “In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids…We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”

So who’s automatically excluded from this “cool” group? Girls above a size 10, apparently. Abercrombie doesn’t even list women’s XL or XXL on its size chart. According to Lewis, the only reason Abercrombie offers XL and XXL men’s sizes is likely to appeal to beefy athletes. Read more

Mountain Dew is pulling an ad created by the founder of hip-hop group Odd Future, Tyler Gregory Okonma (better known as Tyler, the Creator) after it elicited cries of racism. A professor at Syracuse University even called it “arguably the most racist commercial in history.”

After watching the video ourselves, all we can say is…WOW. Racial profiling and violence against women all wrapped up in one extremely bizarre and undeniably offensive package.

Not only is it the most racially insensitive spot we’ve seen in recent memory, but it promotes so many dangerous and offensive stereotypes at once that it’s hard to know what to be angry about first. The ad features a white detective (holding a Mountain Dew) urging a bandaged-up white woman to pick her assailant out of a lineup of all African American men (and one extremely threatening goat, voiced by Tyler himself).

As the woman tries to pick out her attacker (the goat), he threatens her with phrases like “You shoulda gave me some more; I’m nasty” and “You better not snitch on a playa. Snitches get stitches.” When the woman is too intimidated to continue, the detective says takes a swig of his Mountain Dew and says, “She’s just gotta dew it.” Really? That was all leading up to a pun?

PepsiCo gave the following statement to AdWeek after the uproar: “We understand how this video could be perceived by some as offensive, and we apologize to those who were offended…We have removed the video from all Mountain Dew channels and have been informed that Tyler is removing it from his channels as well.”

While pulling the ad and apologizing were probably the right moves, we found the language of the apology a bit unimpressive. They don’t take responsibility for creating and releasing an ad that was very clearly in poor taste; instead, they apologize that it “could be perceived by some as offensive.” In other words, the responsibility really rests upon the hyper-critical audience. But maybe now we’re being hyper-critical? What do you think? Let us know in the comments section.

 UPDATE (5/3/13): Perhaps we weren’t being hyper-critical about PepsiCo’s halfhearted apology. The brand released a new (more apologetic) statement yesterday afternoon, saying: “We Apologize for this video and take full responsibility. We have removed it from all Mountain Dew Channels and Tyler is removing it from his channels as well.”

Benetton is an Italian fashion line known for its social activism, including its creation of The UNHATE Foundation, which, according to its website, “seeks to contribute to the creation of a new culture against hate, building on Benetton’s underpinning values.”

Those “underpinning values”, however, are being questioned in light of the company’s denial that it had any ties to the garment factory in Savar, Bangladesh, that collapsed last week, tragically killing at least 377 people. The company tweeted on April 24: “In reference to the tragic news on the collapse of the building in Bangladesh, Benetton Group wants to clarify that none of the companies involved are suppliers to Benetton Group or any of its brands.” .

Since then, however, strong evidence suggesting Benetton clothing was being manufactured at the factory (known as Rana Plaza) has been uncovered. Photos taken of the rubble by the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse clearly show shirts with “United Colors of Benetton” labels. Also, one of the manufacturers that had been based at the factory, New Wave Bottoms, lists Benetton as a client, and labor rights activists said they found documents linking Benetton to the factory while they were digging through the debris.

In light of this hard-to-ignore evidence, the company released a statement on April 29, which said: “A one-time order was completed and shipped out of one of the manufacturers involved several weeks prior to the accident. Since then, this subcontractor has been removed from our supplier list.”

While Benetton is far from the only big-name company connected to Rana Plaza (Wal-Mart, Ireland’s Primark, and Canada’s Joe Fresh all made clothing there), the company’s dedication to social activism — coupled with its initial denial — seem to be making it a prime target for public ire. Read more

For the second time this month, a company is apologizing for making light of suicide in their advertizing. While these unapproved McDonald’s posters were distasteful and insensitive, Hynudai’s “Pipe Job” spot, which actually depicts a failed suicide attempt, takes the decidedly un-funny joke to an entirely different level.

The ad shows a man attempting to end his life with carbon monoxide poisoning by breathing the exhaust of a new Hyundai. The joke’s on him, though; the car’s emissions are so clean, he lives to see another day.

Yeah. We’re not laughing, either.

In fact, because some of us have immediate family members who have suffered with depression and have attempted suicide, we just can’t muster our usual “lighten up” attitude for this one — it’s just plain offensive (and potentially harmful). There is ample data showing that careless depictions of suicide can actually cause more suicides to occur. And this ad not only depicts a pretty detailed blue-print for how to kill yourself, but it also neglects to show any evidence of the impact that this man’s actions would have on others, or suggest that there is any kind of help available to him.

A spokesman for Hyundai told Forbes via email that the video was created in Europe by a European agency (Innocean Europe), and said that Hyundai Motor North America was not involved in any way in its production or posting. He also passed on the following statement from Hyundai Europe:

“We understand that some people may have found the iX35 video offensive.  We are very sorry if we have offended anyone.  We have taken the video down and have no intention of using it in any of our advertising or marketing.”

Hyundai North America has since publicly issued the following statement:

We at Hyundai Motor America are shocked and saddened by the depiction of a suicide attempt in an inappropriate UK video featuring a Hyundai. Suicide merits thoughtful discussion, not this type of treatment.

While we do feel that this apology and the decision to pull the ad were appropriate damage-control responses, we are a little surprised the ad made it that far in the first place without someone somewhere along the line saying, “gee, guys, it’s clever and all, but this goes quite a bit too far”. Mental illness is still a fairly taboo subject in many respects, and those suffering from it often feel too ashamed to talk openly about what they are going through or to seek help. We don’t see ads making light of other life-threatening disabilities, so why is depression any different?

On principle, we weren’t honestly sure we even wanted to include the video in this post, but realized readers would likely want to see what we’re talking about. The ad is below the jump, but we personally found it disturbing enough to suggest you use discretion before viewing.

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If you’re in the PR industry, you know all about the recent public relations woes Reese Witherspoon and her husband, Jim Toth, are experiencing as a result of their arrest last weekend. He was busted for drunk driving while she was arrested for disorderly conduct. Oh, and acting like a spoiled Hollywood Star by telling the officer “Do you know my name?”

If he didn’t, he does now.

So far, Reese and the Witherspoon PR team have issued an apology expressing regret and embarrassment, and she has cancelled promotional interviews for her new movie Mud at Good Morning America and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Pretty standard stuff, really.

But we’d like to ask out readers, as PR pros, what strategic advice they’d give to Reese as a response to this public relations disaster.
Let us know in the comment section.

OK, so we understand why Rutgers decided to drop athletic director Tim Pernetti for choosing not to fire now-famous “bully” coach Mike Rice when he first saw the clips of Rice pushing and taunting his players while aiming quick passes at their nibbly bits. But we will say this: If you want someone to quietly exit stage left in order to reduce the intensity of the negative publicity (and we assume school administrators wanted Pernetti to do just that) then we would advise against giving him a deal cushy enough to inspire headlines well outside the world of college sports.

Upon leaving Rutgers, Pernetti will receive $1.2 million in “salary” plus a “car allowance”, two years’ worth of insurance coverage and a free iPad to top it off! Remember how everyone took the piss out of banks for giving their executives millions after they helped crash the American economy? Well this is not quite as bad as that. But it is still very bad!

Surely Rutgers could have come up with a better way to do this, right? We understand the need for a scapegoat, but if your organization is tied to one man with such a heavy chain then you might want to just relegate him to an HR position in a poorly lit basement somewhere, no?

Get ready for some “greenwashing”, folks. The National Confectioners Association — which counts among its members the makers of Snickers, Mars Bars, NesQuick and pretty much every other sugary treat you continue to enjoy (in secret) as a responsible adult — wants a bit of a makeover. More specifically, the organization plans to hire an unnamed PR firm to help it gently convince the American public to stop associating the word “sugar” with the word “obesity” as if one could somehow lead to the other. Come on!

So these guys want to spend $2 million on a social/digital media campaign targeting those moms who think, for whatever crazy reason, that eating too much sugar could give their kids type two diabetes — which would then leave them considerably more likely to suffer from obesity and all related health problems later in life. I mean, where do they get these ridiculous ideas? Oh, right…

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Full confession: we don’t follow college sports. But of course we haven’t been able to avoid the story of Rutgers coach Mike Rice, who lost his job after starring in a video that should have been labeled “Wow, I’m a jackass”:

When officials in the school’s sports department first saw the video last year, they suspended and fined the coach. But as soon as it hit ESPN, the public registered its discontent and the school found itself in full crisis mode. Rutgers decided to fire Rice, but that was hardly the end of the story: yesterday we learned that the school owed him a cool $100K in severance pay due to the fact that it allowed him to complete the season rather than letting him go in December when the tapes surfaced. Administrators were understandably irritated by this news, and this morning we read that the school has also dismissed athletic director Tim Pernetti, the guy who made the initial decision to keep Rice on.

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