As the CEO of LifeLock, an identity theft protection company, Todd gave out his social security number to show how secure LifeLock was. Perhaps not surprisingly, his identity was stolen. 13 times.

When the Czech government came out with research showing that smoking was costing the healthcare system, Phillip Morris tried to show that smoking actually saved the government money due to the early deaths of smokers. Of course, there was a predictable public backlash.

Although Abercrombie and Fitch has had its share of mess ups, nothing quite competes with CEO Mike Jeffries explaining why the company doesn’t have any plus sizes. In his own words, “fat chicks will never be part of the ‘in’ crowd,” and he doesn’t want overweight women wearing his brand. He only wants good looking people. So yeah, there’s that.

When miners working for the Rockefellers started striking in Colorado, they (the Rockefellers) called in the National Guard. Many of the miners, along with their families, were slaughtered. In response, the Rockefellers founded the first PR department to deal with the fallout. They also started the Rockefeller Foundation to try showing people that they’re not that bad.

Hoover thought it would be a good idea to give away free plane tickets with its vacuum cleaners. Well, people eventually realized that the plane tickets were often worth more than the actual vacuum cleaner. Hoover lost a good amount of money on that one.

Defacing a world heritage archaeological site in Peru (one of the last well-preserved Nazca lines) to leave the message, “Time for change! The future is renewable GREENPEACE” is never a good move. In any situation.

In 1984, McDonald’s ran a campaign during the Olympics where they would give people scratchcards with various events on them. If the US won, you could redeem it for a free burger. McDonald’s tried to be smart and set it up so that a good number of the scratchcards were for events that the Soviets would typically win. Unfortunately for them, the Soviets boycotted the Olympics that year, and the Americans won almost everything.

Following the Ray Rice domestic abuse incident, a lot of people were asking why his fiancee had stuck around. This led to the WhyIStayed hashtag. DiGiorno’s, however, completely missed the tone of the conversation and posted the following tweet – “#WhyIStayed: He had pizza.” Bad move.

While responding to a question about the weather during his failed bid for Texas Governor, Clayton responded, “Bad weather is like rape, you can’t control it, so you might as well sit back and enjoy it.” He lost.

When Osborne Computers announced their new computer model while still having a warehouse full of the old model, the old model wouldn’t sell anymore and the company went under. Today, this is known as the Osborne Effect.

In 2014, Malaysian Airlines asked flyers to submit their bucket lists as part of a contest. It was obviously not thought out very well given the fact that 537 people had lost their lives with them that year in 2 crashes.

Back in the 90’s, this Cleveland radio station advertised that they were shutting down on March 31st. Everybody tuned in faithfully, and at midnight…April Fools! Apparently, it didn’t go down with everyone as well as they had hoped.

In order to prove that tetraethyl lead (a gasoline additive) was safe, Thomas poured it on his hands and inhaled it for one minute. He was later diagnosed with lead poisoning.

During the 1990’s, Calvin Klein ran advertisements that made it look like a porn director was luring minors into a basement for a photo shoot. Needless to say, this did not go over well, and the ads were quickly pulled.

In 2003, during the height of the SARS epidemic, Hong Kong ran an ad saying that the city would “take your breath away.”

He published a book about how he “would have” killed his wife.

He was poised to beat U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill in a 2012 election when he made his infamous remark about how women who are the victims of “legitimate rape” rarely get pregnant. He didn’t win.

When BP’s CEO, Tony Howard, said that he “would like his life back” following the BP spill, it was definitely not taken in a very receptive manner, especially considering that it seemed as though the CEO was making himself into a victim. He was replaced a month later.

When the CEO of Ratners (a British jeweler) was asked how he could sell his products for so cheap, he replied, “Because they’re total crap.” It was a joke, and everyone already knew that Ratners was low quality, but insulting the customers was a mistake. Ratners ceased to exist shortly thereafter.

Just before a trip to Africa, Justine, the communications director for InterActive Corp, tweeted, “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” Since she was taking off as soon as she tweeted, she had no idea what kind of storm she had created. There was even a hashtag called #HasJustineLandedYet. She was fired shortly thereafter.

When Mountain Dew came out with their “Dub The Dew” contest, they invited customers to come up with names for new flavors. They didn’t count on 4chan taking over the contest. Choice number 1 was “Hitler did nothing wrong.”

When an aerial photographer was taking pictures of the California coastline to illustrate erosion, Barbra Streisand’s mansion was thrown into the mix. She sued saying it violated her privacy, but this just led to the case blowing up online. It even came to be known as the Streisand Effect (when you try to suppress some information but your efforts backfire).

When Gordon Ramsey came on to do a restaurant makeover for Kitchen Nightmares, he ended up walking out saying the restaurant owners were hopeless. To give you some background (Gordon is not known for being level headed), the owners were a married couple that would constantly upset their customers and even do things like keep the tips from the waitresses. At any rate, they received a lot of negative publicity online following the episode. The couple responded to the publicity very negatively which just exacerbated the backlash. Eventually, the restaurant had to shut down.

Right after receiving their government bailout in 2008, AIG hosted a corporate retreat in St. Regis, California for over half a million dollars. Yea, that happened.

In 1992, Pepsi ran a contest in the Philippines. They were handing out $1 million to a lucky winner based on bottle cap numbers. Unfortunately, the winning number wasn’t unique, and there were 800,000 winners. Rioting ensued, Pepsi withdrew all but 2 of its employees, and people even died when a Pepsi truck was firebombed.