It baffles me anytime a company spends millions of dollars on advertising and then makes a move to make themselves look really bad in front of the public. Take Walmart for example, with their recent issue with their ex-employee Debbie Shank, who now suffers brain injuries from a car accident and Walmart paid the medical bills. The woman won a million-dollar settlement, which she took home 417K (this money was intented for her long term care). Walmart in turn sues her for $470,000 for their lost money. After a huge public outcry, Walmart decided not to collect the money, which was a great move on their part. Why did they try to recover that money in the first place and inflict a huge public relations wound on themselves? I am not sure if this was a huge success (because it has become a huge viral internet marketing campaign) or a failure?
2. Saving Money on the Graphic Designer
I can't believe this was published with the IStockPhoto logo
Whoops, they forgot to flip the image back?
3. Some missing pieces in your strategy
I am sure you remember the McDonalds Monopoly game. Well unfortunately the advertising agency one year stole the winning pieces, which led to an FBI investigation. McDonalds re-issued $10 million dollars in prizes along with a public apology. A great question to ask: Do we really trust this advertising agency?
Hoover promised European customers airline tickets for buying a vacuum. In response, Hoover was flooded with orders. The price of the tickets ended up costing more than the profit on the vacuums, which led to millions of dollars in losses, years of litigation and negative PR. This might have seemed like a great idea, as it certainly did sell vacuums but at the end of the day, it lost them some serious money.
4. Ad Placement
Sometimes ad placement is half the battle!
The advertisement on the bus says: If you don't have GIO Third Party Property
Insurance, we suggest you don't hit the bus.
5. Getting Your Commercial Banned For Being Inappropriate
Here are two examples of commercials that went just a little too far trying to stand out and got their commercial banned.
6. Lost in Translation-Many companies bring a product to another nation and can not figure out why it is not selling like it did in its homeland. That is until, someone says, "Hey dummy, do you know what your product means over here?"
The Chevy Nova means, "doesn't go in Spanish."
Both Clairol and Rolls Royce were introducing a product that had the word "Mist," in the title, to the German market only to find out it meant, "manure."
Braniff introduced the campaign, "Fly in Leather," which came out in Spanish, "Fly Naked."
When Coca Cola first introduced their product to China, it was pronounced Ke-Kou-Ke-La which meant "bite the wax tadpole," or "female horse stuffed with wax." After researching 40,000 similar phonetic equivalents was then changed to "Ko-Kou-Ko-Le," which means, "happiness in the mouth."
7. Not standing out
When does it end?
8. False Advertising
Airborne is paying $23.5 million dollars back to consumers for false advertisements that Airborne helps fight colds. This class action lawsuit was won after it was determine that there is no evidence that it the product actually fights or prevents colds. Thus many felt it was deceptively advertised.
Shock Value 
