An airport gives away its handicapped spots to Lexus owners in a giant marketing fail

(This post originally appeared on The Washington Post)

Business owners aren’t the only ones looking to generate more business. Airports, too, want to attract corporate revenues from companies wishing to present their products and services to travelers. So you can’t blame the Calgary Airport Authority for trying new things. Unfortunately, not all of our marketing ideas turn out the way we planned.

The airport’s marketing team recently came up with an interesting idea: how about getting a major auto maker–let’s say Lexus–to sponsor a bunch of parking spaces close to the terminals that are specially reserved for drivers of their cars? The people at Lexus Canada liked it because they could paint their logo on a few prime spots not only for the pleasure of their customers but to show others the perks of being a Lexus owner. Airport officials liked it because…well…money.

However, one group of people didn’t much like it at all. Communists? Anti-globalists? Nope. It would the disabled. Why? Because, according to a CBC News report, the new Lexus spaces replaced existing handicapped spaces. Not cool.

After receiving a complaint from a family with special access needs (who found that five previous spaces they might once have used were now painted over with giant Lexus logos), the airport quickly reversed itself, issuing an apology and claiming sole responsibility for the selection of the stalls identified for the parking campaign. “Lexus Canada did not play a role in selecting, and was not aware of, the locations for the campaign,” the airport announced.

But the damage was done. The folks at Lexus felt forced to issue their own heartfelt apology, asking the airport to “correct the situation as quickly as possible by returning these parking spaces to their intended use.”

The incident underscores the potentially harmful consequences (like…negative media attention?) that could occur when one partner in a marketing campaign doesn’t pay enough attention to what another partner is doing.  To this, Lexus Canada told CBC it would in the future “carefully scrutinize the details of these types of marketing campaigns” and “are taking steps to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”