Can you be so wrong? You can. Automation is one of the most powerful tools in marketing, but one unfavorable coincidence is enough for us and we are facing such a crisis that we can only check on Google: “How to change your first and last name”, do- and send only your CV. All records have been broken in the case of KFC.

For Germany today, the history of World War II is incredibly difficult. The historical politics of this country assumes the memory and the shame of these events, while addressing “in a very creative way” the origins of the criminals. They are often called “Nazis” and not “Germans”, but hey. This is not an entry into how our neighbors are handling the post-war burden. Most importantly, he punishes himself very severely for showing adherence to Nazi values ​​and symbols. There is also fierce opposition to this sort of thing in society.

So people who received the notification from the KFC app that they were invited to celebrate Kristallnacht – the event in which one of the most notorious pogroms of Jews and their property took place , were surely very surprised. I would be too. This is not a brutal “gangbang” joke. No one said goodbye to working in marketing in this truly “spectacular” way. There was just a mistake (as KFC claims). As part of the “celebration”, KFC invited people to purchase a KFCheese set.

It should be remembered that Kristallnacht was the Nazi-led pogrom of the Jews on November 9-10, 1938, which swept through cities in Germany and Austria. It was meant to be a symbol of “breaking free” from the presence of Jews in many areas of social life. Shop windows were destroyed, houses were burned down and German and Austrian citizens of Jewish nationality were harassed. At least 91 Jews were killed and 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps. Yesterday was the 84th anniversary of the pogrom.

A few minutes after I sent out a really shocking push notification, another popped up.

Sorry, there was an error. Due to a bug in our system, we sent an incorrect and inappropriate message through our app.

What happened?

You should know that such messages are not sent “on the finger”, but are planned. However, scheduling such messages can take some time. Often “holiday calendars” (also unusual and controversial) are used, which are inserted into a template, and then a catalog of birthdays, jubilees or occasions is implemented in the content management system. This was probably the case here – another marketing activity was organized to stimulate the sale of specific products. However, when entering the “input” data, no attention was taken to filter out holidays that should not be celebrated.

Some think the filtering may be, but it was done by a very young person who doesn’t know what Kristallnacht was, and then no one took a look at the list of occasions in the system and … such a celebration appeared in customer notifications.

In marketing, automation saves time and money (not just for agency clients). However, when using it, you need to strengthen the control system or at least periodically check whether the calendar actions do not contain such obvious errors or image defects. Examples from the biggest brands show that there can always be something wrong.