2006 World Cup advertising campaign
Prior to the 2006 World Cup, MediaMarkt launched a campaign, claiming to be the "best fan supplier" ("Bester Fanausrüster"), with commercials showing international football fans shopping at MediaMarkt, showing exaggerated stereotypes of the participating countries, and making fun of the Austria team, which did not qualify. This included a French seductress, Dutch fans smoking marijuana in caravans, or a Saudi haggling - to pay more. German fans were portrayed with big bellies, asking for refrigerators to keep their beer cool, rather than looking for a new TV set.
An additional series of ads, promoting a rebate of €10 for each goal Germany scores (except penalty shoot-outs), showed international soccer fans begging the Germans to score as many goals as possible - against their own team.
When the Netherlands lost to Portugal, MediaMarkt used a quote from a 1980s show featuring Rudi Carrell, a Dutchman who was a long-time TV celebrity in Germany, to express Schadenfreude. A World Cup trophy is shown to grieving Dutch fans in their caravan with the comment "This would have been your prize!".
Polish advertising
In March 2006, the "Poland version" showed moustache-wearing Polish customers praising the shop for "prices deep like Polish soul" before hugging the German sales managers, who looked quite uncomfortable in the bear hugs. Afterwards, one of the Germans pointed out that his watch was still there, and that "The Pole is an honest person, after all". Then, the three men are shown to be missing their trousers.[28]
This commercial caused a scandal in Poland, for the widely known unfounded German stereotype of Poles being thieves. MediaMarkt argued that the advertisements also made fun of other national clichés, including Germans, and none of the other clichés were perceived as negative towards the people they presented. It aimed to exaggerate the cliché of the Polish thief to dismiss it as unjustified prejudice, MediaMarkt claimed.[29]
The store apologised and withdrew the advert after their Polish branch asked to do so, following protests in Poland, a call from the Polish embassy in Berlin and protests from German Polonia.
Portuguese advertising
In January 2008, coinciding with the opening of its 500th overall store in Europe (located in Alfragide), MediaMarkt launched a campaign presenting a fictitious country called Parvónia ("Dumb Land"), where several characters with Eastern European accents were presented as being from this country, which even has an anthem. A central theme of this campaign presented a Boy Scout as an idiot. This really upset people as many consider Scouts to be responsible and valued members of society. An online petition was created to persuade MediaMarkt to withdraw the campaign and to offer a public apology.[30] Due to this petition and a lot of pressure from the Scouting movement, on February 7, MediaMarkt had to remove the Boy Scout from their campaign, including TV and radio ads, while also suspending the Parvónia campaign from television.[31]
Turkish advertising
Turkish Union Association in Eskişehir, Turkey motivated suspension of an advertisement campaign by the group on grounds that MediaMarkt "insulted Turkishness" by depicting consumers that purchased overpriced merchandise with animal heads. A ban of the advertisements lasted for three months in 2009.[32] There have been many accusations on their official Facebook fan page about their false product advertisements in Turkey.
Saubillig
A former German campaign played on the German expression "saubillig" which means extremely cheap, but literally "sow (female pig) cheap". Sau- is a common emphasising prefix in colloquial German. Inside the stores, the entrances were signposted as "Schweingang" = wordplay on the word Eingang (Entrance) and Schwein (pig), and the exit as "Sausgang" = wordplay on the word Ausgang (Exit) and the German word for sow (Sau) - the female pig.
