For those of you who remember the sitcom “WKRP in Cincinnati” from the late 1970s, you may recall that the premise of the show was a struggling radio station trying to make it to the big time. In one of the most memorable episodes in television history called “Turkeys Away“, the station attempts to increase their marketability by giving away free turkeys on Thanksgiving.

To add to the spectacle of the promotion, the turkeys were dropped from a helicopter onto the unsuspecting citizens of Cincinnati. Panic breaks out on the city streets as the turkeys start to hit the ground like “sacks of wet cement”. Additionally the station is inundated with complaints from animal-rights groups all the way tothe mayor. At the end of the episode the owner of the station is heard to mutter “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!”. This is what we could call a marketing failure.

I didn’t think I would ever see something similar until my family and I ventured to a Christmas Eve children’s service at a local church. During the sermon in which all the children were invited to sit up at the front with the priest; an attempt to reenact Joseph leading the Virgin Mary to Bethlehem on a donkey was put together. A boy dressed as Joseph led a girl dressed as Mary right down the aisle on an actual live horse.

At the outset it was a wonderful moment as the oohs and ahs from the children filled the church. However, as the horse was being led back down the aisle, nature called; and we all bore witness to an amazing animal bowel movement. The oohs and ahs were now replaced by laughter and the site of church volunteers running to find mops, brooms, and snow shovels. Needless to say, the rest of the service was somewhat ignored as cleanup attempts drew most of the attention.

Ideas that once seem genius can be turned upside down in a flash and become a marketing failure. When marketing yourself or your business, you may get the urge to try to do something extraordinary to garner attention. In this instance it is vital to consider all details and scenarios that can arise. For example, can turkeys fly? and if they can how are people going to catch the turkeys? or is the horse trained to be inside?

How to Handle a Marketing Failure

The two aforementioned examples come from television and a community gathering. If this were to have occurred in the business world the brand may have gotten publicity for its marketing failure; rather than its product. When these failures happen, it’s important to monitor the fall out of the brands reputation. Act quickly to correct the mistake, and apologize to all groups involved.

In the examples above, the church had a better response plan than the radio station. This is simply because they had snow shovels ready. Every company at one point or another is going to make some mistakes. They may be large or small, but it’s important that responding quickly makes that failure an anecdote rather than a case study in business school on what not to do.