The company fired CEO/former Apple man Ron Johnson in April after a big sales dive and followed his exit with an all-media campaign designed to address the backlash over controversial changes adopted during his tenure. It all started with this apologetic TV spot:

JCP continued the campaign by turning its social media forums into customer service complaint lines, promoting the #jcpListens tag and asking for feedback on Facebook and Twitter in order to absorb frustrated shoppers’ many suggestions on how to improve the business.

Thanks for sending in all of your feedback! We’re off for tonight, but we’ll be back in the morning. #jcpListens

— jcpenney (@jcpenney) May 3, 2013

The chain didn’t just ask for ideas; it got specific.

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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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But before Merida could join the ranks of her more mature counterparts, she had to undergo quite a makeover. First, her dress — a functional frock, suitable for her outdoor adventures, was replaced by a much brighter, frillier, more low-cut number, reminding young girls that looks trump comfort. And because there’s nothing feminine or damsel-like about packing heat, her beloved bow and arrows were apparently confiscated.

Equally disturbing were the changes that were made to her previously young-girl-like figure: her waist had clearly been cinched and her bust noticeably increased, she was given flirtatious lashes and rosier cheeks, and her adventurous, slightly defiant-looking smile gave way to a sultry smirk. After critics lambasted the made-over Merida for over-sexualizing what was supposed to be a young girl to whom real young girls could relate, Disney quietly pulled the image from their website and replaced it with the Pixar original.

We’re not surprised the backlash was so intense, because while we agree that the over-sexualization was a major problem, we think it went beyond that. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The New York Times reports that many businesses and industry groups now plan to follow the food industry’s example by offering the public more detailed information about how and where their clothes are made. H&M and Zara have agreed to sign a new “factory safety accord,” and major names like Disney, Nike, and Walmart may follow with campaigns designed to appropriate the “green,” “organic,” and “fair trade” themes favored by food and household goods marketers in recent years. The purpose of this material, of course, will be to highlight the brands’ corporate social responsibility efforts and distance them from horrific accidents like the one in Bangladesh.

It’s nothing new for fashion: upstarts like American Apparel began using their own “fair trade” practices as key selling points some time ago. Yet, despite AA’s success, retailers like Maggie’s Organics and Everlane (tagline “Luxury Basics. Radical Transparency.”) remain few and far between.

Not for long.

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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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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. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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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Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that the woman depicted in the image is not suffering from depression or anxiety, but from the shame that comes with an over-abundance of love for McDonald’s Big Mac. The ad reads: “You’re not alone. Millions of people love the Big Mac.”

The 800-number provided on the poster connects directly to McDonald’s corporate office, which, considering the public’s less-than-fuzzy feelings about the ad, probably didn’t result in many amused phone calls.

McDonald’s apologized for the ad, and explained that the company never approved it for public release:

We can confirm this ad was not approved by McDonald’s. And, as soon as we learned about it, we asked that it be taken down immediately. We have an approval process in place, with our marketing and advertising agencies, to ensure that all advertising content is consistent with our brand values. Regrettably, in this incident, that process was not followed. We sincerely apologize for this error.

Arnold, the agency responsible for the ad, released this statement:

Arnold apologizes for its mistake to McDonald’s and to anyone who was offended by the ad. McDonald’s did not approve the ad, and its release was our unintended error. We’ve addressed the issue and have improved our approval process to ensure this does not happen in the future.

The poster was dreamed up as part of a larger (and still unapproved) campaign that spoofs stereotypical subway ads. The personal injuries lawyer poster promises to “get you the sausage you deserve”, while the continuing education parody reads, “It’s never too late for an Angus Bacon Cheese.” Both of which seem, at least to us, like they may have drawn a bit less ire.

This is the second time in the past several days that an unapproved ad released to the public went a little too far, resulting in a PR headache for both the agency responsible and the company being advertised. Earlier this month, Ford found itself in damage control mode after its agency leaked an ad featuring cartoon versions of the Kardashian sisters tied up and gagged in the back of a Ford Figo.

While some industry professionals feel that everyone just needs to lighten up when it comes to “offensive” scam ads (ads released without client approval), we tend to agree a bit more with AdAge columnist Ken Wheaton that such unapproved ads, especially when they rub the public the wrong way, do less to boost creativity and more to damage brands and undermine agency credibility. While it’s nice to imagine everyone “lightening up” and uniting in support of creativity and a sense of humor, until they actually do, an offended public is an offended public and there’s nothing good about having your brand attached to that.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Because the public groups Japanese cars and most other Japanese products under the same national umbrella, these brands must work extra hard to differentiate themselves from each other. They even suffer through the same PR fails! For example, the latest auto recall scandal involves Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Mazda and 3.4 million vehicles whose passenger side airbags could “deploy with too much force, sending shards of metal into the passenger area”. OK then!

This revelation presents a litany of PR challenges, the most notable being the public’s collective question, “If these brands all use the same airbags and airbag technology, what actually makes them different?”

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Ireland’s Central Bank has learned a valuable PR lesson: When trying to garner public favor and interest by honoring one of your country’s greatest literary figures with a limited edition coin, please, for the love of all things bookish, try not to misquote him.

On Wednesday, the bank announced the launch of a limited-edition ten euro coin to honor James Joyce, which features a portrait of the author and a quotation from his world-famous epic Ulysses. The words printed on the coin read: “Signatures of all things that I am here to read.”

Unfortunately, the actual quote is: “Signatures of all things I am here to read.” The bank added the word “that.”

The backlash was swift, prompting the bank to release the following statement in explanation:

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This was a no-brainer for Reebok. Of course, the proactive individuals at UltraViolet who created the anti-Ross petition probably had a bit more to do with the decision than this humble blog, and we’re not the sort of people to take credit for others’ work, but we’d like to think of ourselves as members of the chorus.

On a final note, if Reebok or any other brand wants to hire a spokesperson with “street cred” in the future, they might want to refrain from choosing a guy whose entire backstory is a product of his own imagination. Just sayin’.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The big reveal is a TL;DR profile in this coming weekend’s New York Times magazine in which Weiner and his wife Huma Abedin review the painful details of the fallout and his plans for a new beginning in which he will rise from the ashes like a triumphant phoenix in boxer-briefs. It seems that Weiner entertains fantasies of running for mayor of New York City next year along with everyone else who lives in the greater metropolitan area.

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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?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

This issue is very relevant because, as the economy grows more global by the hour, every company that doesn’t sell artisanal pickles in Williamsburg, Brooklyn wants to build a strong reputation in China.

Here’s the backstory:

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