Fail Adidas · 2017
'Congrats, you survived the Boston Marathon'
What happened
The day after the 2017 race, Adidas emailed finishers with the subject line 'Congrats, you survived the Boston Marathon!' Four years after the bombing that killed three people and injured hundreds at that finish line. Adidas apologised the same day.
What went wrong
'Survived' is standard runner humour and completely unusable in that one place. The template was written centrally and shipped without a local read.
The rule
Event-triggered copy needs a market-specific vocabulary blocklist. In Boston, 'survive', 'blast' and 'finish line' are not neutral words.
Takeaway
Subject lines are creative. Route them through the same review as the ad.