Bottle Cap with Offensive Message

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Bottle Cap Marketing Disaster

Imagine you purchase one of your favorite beverages or even a case of them because you find a deal. Maybe you pack it for lunch, or have a friend over and offer a beverage. What would your gut reaction be if you saw this:

This is what one shocked family found under their bottle cap, and furious is an understatement to their reaction. Here are more details:

Blake Loates of Edmonton in Alberta, Canada told Metro Calgary she was shocked when she opened her beverage and read the words “YOU RETARD,” written inside of the cap. The language was particularly painful to her and her family as one of Loates’ younger sisters, Fiona, 11, has cerebral palsy and autism.

The cap inspired Loates’ father, who lives in Tacoma, Wash., to issue a lengthy letter of complaint to Vitaminwater’s parent company Coca-Cola.

“What would you do if you opened up your bottle of Vitamin Water and on the bottom of the lid it read, “YOU RETARD”?” Doug Loates wrote in his letter swearing off the beverage company for life. “Think about it. I bet you’d be pissed off if you had a Fiona in your life… Can you imagine if SHE had opened this bottle?” Read more…

How in the world did something like this happen?

Unfortunately, it sounds like the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing. A clever marketing competition with different languages has gone wrong.

“It was never our intention to offend anyone with this promotion,” said Denny. “This was a mistake during the review process and we are taking steps to investigate and rectify the situation. We hope that our consumers can accept our profound apologies.”

At the end of the day, I just don’t see that family or their friends for that matter, enjoying this beverage again any time soon. With all the technology and an entire marketing department, no one who spoke English thought this would be a problem?

Bottle Cap Mayhem

I don’t even want to think about how many of these bottle caps were actually distributed, and the other possibly offensive remarks. We’ll see what the weekend brings, especially with the nicer weather today in the northeast.

So, what do you think? Leave a comment, share with a friend!