TIFU: By injuring a lot of people launching an advertising campaign.

Not today but a long time ago

I was tasked to launch a new snack food product, monster munch, in Papua New Guinea back in the 80s when I was running an advertising agency there. I had the idea (what I thought was brilliant at the time) to use the traditional “cargo cult” cultural phenomenon to get attention to the product.

The cargo cult phenomenon started during the Second World War where the armed services would airdrop supplies to the troops but as the terrain was so treacherous many drops landed in very remote locations and were discovered by the natives. The natives saw the drops as gifts coming from ancestral spirits and would wait patiently for drops from every plane that flew over.

My idea, hire a baron beach craft airplane load it up with bags of monster munch and drop them over populated areas while the radio commercial was on air. What insured was a nightmare, several people were injured climbing up on buildings to retrieve the bags, falling over cliffs, running into traffic nearly drowning in lakes……..

The client was impressed by the idea but not the collateral damage. Not the highest point of my career.

TL;DR Didn’t think through the ramifications of dropping packs of snack foods out of a plane in Papua New Guinea.