Taken from Dumbest business moments There’s actually 101, but I don’t have room for them all.
Enjoy.
2. A dozen Burger King marketing execs suffer first- and second-degree burns while walking over hot coals as part of a team-building retreat in October. One of the injured, a VP for product marketing aptly named Dana Frydman, tries to put a positive spin on having her feet flame-broiled like so much ground chuck. “It made you feel a sense of empowerment and that you can accomplish anything,” she tells the Miami Herald.
3. Banana Republic co-founders Mel and Patricia Ziegler start ZoZa, an “athletic formalwear” retailer, in late 2000. Mel says he expects sales to reach $1 billion within seven years. Gary Rieschel of Softbank Venture Capital invests $16.5 million, telling BusinessWeek, “If you have guts and you have capital, how can you not be optimistic about the consumer market?” Here’s how: ZoZa’s designers revamp its spring 2001 line, intentionally making their dresses two sizes smaller than labeled. Even the svelte are outraged, and ZoZa’s merchandise return rate soars to 80 percent. The company shuts down in May 2001, proving that, if the dress doesn’t fit, you must, uh, quit.
7. Last May, Citizens Against Government Waste, a group that received funding from Microsoft, is caught simulating a “grassroots” campaign to get state attorneys general to drop their antitrust suit against the software giant. One detail that gives the scheme away: Some of the letters supporting Microsoft are from people who have long since died.
16. “No one will deny that Sony is a world-class hardware company, and no one would deny that Microsoft is a world-class software company. Nintendo aspires to be neither one of those things.” — Peter Main, a Nintendo marketing executive, to the San Francisco Chronicle
18. CNN 1, Fox News 0: On her first day as a newsreader for CNN’s Headline News, former NYPD Blue actress Andrea Thompson ingratiates herself to viewers by announcing, “I’m Andrea Thompson, and unless you’ve been living in a cave, you probably already know that.”
23. Italian jewelry company Bulgari pays British novelist Fay Weldon an undisclosed sum to extol Bulgari products in her next book. Weldon complies, offering descriptions of “white gold and pavé diamonds, cold metal intricately, beautifully worked, lain heavily against the cool, moist flesh of wrist and throat….” The book’s title: The Bulgari Connection.
27. Mobile Office Enterprise unveils the Express Desk, which attaches a notebook computer to the steering wheel of a car. For use only while parked, of course.
28, 29, 30. Great Moments in Privacy
Part 1: In June 2001, the Georgia Student Finance Commission accidentally allows more than 18,000 scholarship applicants’ personal information to be released onto the Internet.
Part 2: Not to be outdone, Eli Lilly sends a mass e-mail in July to users of its antidepressant Prozac but neglects to use the “bcc” header, further depressing its customers by disclosing their online identities to one another.
Part 3: Trumping Eli Lilly, in October a graduate student at the University of Montana accidentally posts to the school’s website more than 400 documents relating to the psychiatric treatment of 62 children, including names, addresses, descriptions of sessions, and diagnoses.
34. Sept. 11 Inc., Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid Division: The October issue of the Association of Lloyd’s Members newsletter announces that the terrorist attacks represent a “historic opportunity” for insurance underwriters to make money.
39. After filing for Chapter 11, declaring their intention to liquidate the company’s assets, and ending health-care benefits for retirees, Polaroid executives file a request in bankruptcy court to distribute an estimated $19 million in “stay bonuses” to the company’s top 45 executives.
40. The Newspaper Association of America names Kmart its “Retailer of the Year” on Jan. 21, 2002, one day before the company files for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11.
TBC
Loading comments...