Some Ad Controversies That I Found!

 A 2009 commercial for the MTV Video Music Awards features Taylor Swift singing about the 2009 VMAs and how good it will be, including the line "There'll be no teardrops on my guitar." At the actual show, Kanye West hijacked the microphone from Taylor Swift during her acceptance speech so that he could rep Beyonce.

• UK mobile phone network "Phones4U" embarked on an advertising campaign where they show a particular group of people (scoutmasters, yo-yo specialists) then claim that their phone rates would be wasted on such people because they have no friends (unlike their target demographic, one would assume). Said groups weren't amused.

• A commercial for Samsung's Smart TV shows a caveman-like guy watching The Croods and acting like an imbecile while his wife upgrades the TV through an "evolutionary kit" box. She then fantasizes about using the box on her husband, transforming him into a handsome man who does all the chores for her and sets up a dinner date for her (at which point she is brought back to reality by her real husband farting loudly). The implications that Women Are Wiser and that men who don't toil away for their significant others are neanderthals were not lost on commentators

The "Add a Kid" line of kids' clothing attracted some controversy: the main premise of the line is that there is a picture of a headless character printed on the shirt so that when a kid wears it, it looks like his or her head is on the character's body. In order to illustrate this, the shirts had cardboard cutouts that had photos of kids printed on them while in stores. The controversy occurred when one of the shirts with a monkey's body was paired with an African-American child.

• A similar controversy arose when H&M used a black child to model a sweatshirt that read "Coolest Monkey in the Jungle."

The Red Cross issued an apology when a pool safety poster showed the lighter-toned characters acting safely and following the rules, while the ones painted with darker skin tones were the ones breaking the rules

Yet another advertisement using highly questionable metaphors to represent a white/black dichotomy: a Dutch billboard for the PlayStation Portable White featuring a white model violently grabbing a black model's face.

• Nationwide aired this commercial during the 2015 Super Bowl, about a boy who won't be able to experience growing up because he died in an unidentified home accident. The backlash that ensued accused Nationwide of exploiting the lives of children to sell insurance and its commercial for being too depressing, and it never aired again.

• The Apple Jacks campaign featured the antagonistic Apple trying to flavor the Apple Jacks cereal before the carefree CinnaMon character. This campaign faced some backlash from certain non-profit groups for possibly discouraging children from eating fruit by suggesting Apple Jacks was superior to the taste of natural apples. This may be why later ads depicted Apple and CinnaMon as friendly rivals and eventually just best friends.

• During the 2012 Summer Olympics, NBC aired a commercial for their sitcom Animal Practice which depicted a monkey doing gymnastics. Seems innocent enough... except the ad aired right after African-American gymnast Gabby Douglas scored her Olympic win, prompting backlash due to the unfortunate timing associating a black gymnast with a monkey gymnast.

• In this Ancestry.com ad set during the 19th century, a white man proposes to a Black woman and urges her to "escape to the North" with him. The ad was criticized for promoting a white savior narrative and ignoring the reason why many Black Americans have white ancestors.