A Look at Some of the Biggest Branding Bloopers and Blunders of 2022

Stuck between the end of a pandemic, the start of a recession and in the crosshairs of inflation, 2022 was no picnic for brands. The picture darkens further when you toss in a labor shortage, ongoing supply chain issues and iffy consumer confidence.

It’s little wonder that ad spending was down for the fourth consecutive quarter in September (though it picked up a bit this month.) All in all, a brand that simply held it together for the last 12 months owes itself a pat on the back.

But as happens every year, holding things together was too tall an order for some companies, who found themselves in fiscal straits—or just PR ones.

Adweek perused 2022’s missteps and below, in no particular order, here are five of the more colorful:

Balenciaga

The takeaway: Sex sells fashion every time—but leave the minors out of it.

When it comes to sexualized advertising, fashion brands have always been among the boldest. A few years ago, Dutch brand Suistudio elicited gasps with an ad showing a woman resting her stiletto heel on a man’s … er, manhood.

But when fashion houses combine this tactic with kids—even tangentially—the result is invariably disastrous. (Older ad mavens might recall Calvin Klein’s 1995 campaign that cast teenagers in what looked like 8-milimeter porn films, resulting in an FBI investigation.)

So it’s anyone’s guess why someone at storied Spanish fashion house Balenciaga greenlit a recent campaign showing kids posing with teddy bears clad in BDSM gear.

Granted, only the stuffed animals were wearing leather harnesses and neck padlocks. And you had to look closely to notice. Even so, the public freaked, and Balenciaga suddenly had all the attention that a marketer could dream of. Just not the good kind.

Then things got worse.

First, web sleuths noticed that one of the props used in the shoot appeared to be a page from a Supreme Court ruling concerning child pornography. That discovery prompted Balenciaga to sue North Six Productions and its set designer, whose creative work had caused “members of the public, including the news media, [to] have falsely and horrifically associated Balenciaga with the repulsive and deeply disturbing subject of the court decision.”

For its part, North Six has said it did not produce the campaign and subcontracted the set designer. Photographer Gabriele Galimberti told The Guardian that his models were actually the kids of Balenciaga employees, who themselves were onset during the shoot.

Besides, he added, the bears were punk, not BDSM.

Balenciaga threw itself into damage control mode, issuing an apology and stating that the company “strongly condemn[s] child abuse.”

Damage was done, however—at least judging from a viral TikTok video whose conspiracy-prone creator identified all manner of purportedly satanic goods and symbols, including a black hood for worshiping Satan and sneakers that “look like the devil staring you in the face.”

Twitter

The takeaway: Move fast and break things was never a good motto for anyone.

On Nov. 9, Elon Musk took to Twitter—the social media platform he’d snapped up for $44 billion on Oct. 27—and tapped out a message: “Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in the coming months.”

Job done, say critics.

Silicon Valley companies have historically prided themselves on flying by the seats of their pants, starting with Facebook’s motto “Move fast and break things.” But knee-jerk decisions can’t fill the shoes of strategy, and Musk is the latest tech bro to prove it.

Musk had scarcely dropped his bags at headquarters before he began to burn the place down. After firing CEO Parag Agrawal, he pink-slipped his CFO, policy head, general counsel and the entire board.

The meat cleaver turned toward the rank and file next when Musk fired roughly 50% of Twitter’s 7,500 employees on Nov. 4.

Those layoffs included employees who managed content moderation, and the sudden disappearance of standards spooked both advertisers and their agencies, which were worried their brand names might suddenly appear alongside objectionable content. Brands that suspended Twitter advertising included Volkswagen, General Motors, REI sporting goods, United Airlines and behemoth ad shop Interpublic Group.

That’s a big problem for Twitter since advertising makes up 90% of its revenue. While some advertisers have returned, others are waiting for reassurances that content will be effectively moderated.

Even as that meltdown took place, another unfolded. Days after buying the platform, Musk informed verified users—people and companies that had earned blue checkmarks by doing some kind of legitimate cultural influencing—that they’d have to pay $19.99 a month to keep them. When horror author Stephen King balked, Musk offered to drop the price to $8, the current price tag.

But $8 was also the price for any person to buy a blue checkmark outright, a move that opened the door for imposters to pose as whoever they wanted, including as major brands like Nestlé, Apple or even Musk’s own Tesla. So many fake accounts resulted that Twitter suspended the experiment two days later.

Then there’s the balance sheet. Musk’s highly leveraged purchase added $13 billion to Twitter’s debt. It’ll cost $1 billion a year just to service that.

Little wonder, then, that Musk was desperate to cut costs and scrounge for new revenue sources. But by removing Twitter’s content watchdogs (including its Trust and Safety Council) in the name of free speech absolutism, the larger question isn’t so much whether Twitter can be more profitable, but whether it’ll ultimately be a place where anyone wants to be at all.

Yeezy

The takeaway: If you’re a brand attached to a toxic spokesperson, plan an exit strategy.

On Oct. 26, a spokesperson for Madame Tussauds wax museum made a brief announcement: Kanye West (who’d shortened his name to Ye in 2021) had been wheeled into storage.

It wasn’t surprising news. October 2022 witnessed the celebrity, who’d enjoyed a net worth measured in 10 figures, destroy his own empire in the space of a few weeks.

The troubles began on Oct. 3, when Ye appeared at Paris Fashion Week to promote his Yeezy Season 9 ready-to-wear collection wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt. Horrified at Ye’s choice to sport a white supremacist slogan, celebs including Jaden Smith and Diddy called him out.

Four days later, Ye struck back at Diddy on Instagram by charging that he was controlled by a Jewish cabal. When the platform suspended him, Ye took to Twitter, and in apparent anger toward Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, announced he was “going death con 2 on Jewish People.” That comment got Ye’s Twitter account locked down, too.

Then Ye bit the biggest corporate hand that fed him. “I can say antisemitic shit,” he bleated on Oct. 16, “and Adidas can’t drop me.”

On Oct. 25, Adidas pulled the plug on the Yeezy sneaker and apparel line, a move that reportedly booted Ye from America’s billionaire roster and dropped his net worth to $400 million.

By month’s end, the brands that had abandoned Ye read like a who’s who of American consumerism: Gap, Balenciaga, Peloton, Vogue, JPMorgan Chase, Foot Locker, Marshalls, TJ Maxx, The RealReal and Christie’s.

Though ultimately the brands stepped up and removed their problematic spokesperson, some received public condemnation for dragging their feet on what many consumers felt should’ve been an obvious and immediate decision.

Disney

The takeaway: When you already have a sterling reputation, try to keep it.

An important note right up top: Disney is going to be fine. Disney’s market cap is still $164 billion. Disney remains among the world’s most respected brands.

Nevertheless, 2022 has not been a good year for the mouse house. Disney stock has fallen 44% in 2022, and November saw its single worst trading day in 21 years.

And why did that happen? Let us count the ways.

First, there’s Disney+. While the streaming service did add more than 12 million new subscribers in Q4, its direct-to-consumer division (which includes ESPN+ and Hulu) lost $1.5 billion. The culprit, industry watchers say, is the high cost of producing new content to meet incessant consumer demand.

Next came the parks. Attempting to recoup pandemic-related losses, the company raised ticket prices at Disney World twice this year. Its other parks saw ticket price hikes as well. The move angered many loyal vacationers, some of whom complained that the Magic Kingdom—with its broken rides and trash on the ground—wasn’t all that.

Last month, price hikes and other moves by CEO Bob Chapek reportedly prompted Bob Iger, who led Disney from 2005 to 2020, to charge that “[Chapek’s] killing the soul of the company.”

Finally, there’s the political mess. When Florida passed the Parental Rights in Education bill (dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill) in March, the Human Rights Campaign wrote a letter condemning the measure. Some 150 companies cosigned—but Disney did not. The move infuriated Disney’s LGBTQ+ employees. It also sullied the perfect score Disney had enjoyed on the Corporate Equality Index.

Which is presumably why Disney reversed itself and began opposing the measure. But that move angered Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who revoked the special tax status that Disney has enjoyed since 1967 on April 19.

The fiscal performance and the waffling over a key social issue left Disney looking as though it lacked a steady hand to lead it. But even still, many were surprised when Chapek stepped down on Nov. 21—and gave the CEO’s office back to Iger.

But Iger only has a two-year contract. It might take the Fairy Godmother to find a suitable replacement.

TerraUSD, FTX, et al.

The takeaway: Crypto brands? Regulate yourselves—or the government will.

Cryptocurrency has hardly been anyone’s idea of a safe, stable investment. But gathering economic storm clouds of 2022 spelled disaster for some of the sector’s largest brands.

As an algorithmic stablecoin, TerraUSD (traded as UST) was supposed to be immune from the vast value fluctuations of larger cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin because its value was pegged to the U.S. dollar. But as the name suggests, stablecoins leave that work in the hands of an algorithm to balance supply and demand to stabilize the price.

On May 7, as a communique by World Economic Forum put it, “the balancing act for this particular stablecoin failed.”

Inside a week, $50 billion vanished from the crypto markets.

UST’s collapse was just the beginning.

FTX’s cryptocurrency exchange ranked among the largest in the sector—big enough to hire Tom Brady and Larry David to star in its ads and slap its name on the Miami Heat’s stadium.

But in November, when CoinDesk revealed that FTX was dangerously leveraged, a resulting run on deposits left it with a liquidity crisis that dragged the $32 billion company into bankruptcy. BlockFi, another crypo exchange, filed Chapter 11 soon after.

By mid-November, the market cap of the 100 biggest cryptocurrencies had fallen by 70% from the same period in 2021: $830 billion essentially went poof.

Despite 2022’s Crypto Winter, as it’s become known, many analysts are cautiously optimistic for crypto’s fortunes in 2023. A study by Deloitte forecasts that 75% of retailers will accept cryptocurrency as a form of payment in the next two years. Giants like Microsoft, AT&T and Amazon already do.

But as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently said, “this is an industry that really needs to have adequate regulation,” and possibly it soon will.