Being the face of a product is a big responsibility for anybody, and as such Role Ending Misdemeanors are not uncommon in advertising because of the risk posed to the product/company if they stay with someone who's gone astray.
There is a two-week waiting period (after the termination of a role) before an example can be added. This ensures the job loss is accurately reported, actually sticks and avoids knee-jerk reactions.
- Eallin Animation ended their relationship with Canadian animator Kevin Bao in December 2019 over an ad he ran for the PlayStation 4's winter lineup when it was discovered that nearly every single shot in it
was traced over plagiarized scenes from other animated works (including but not limited to Steven Universe: The Movie, FLCL, and the music video to Lune of Atlantis' "Moonlight"). - The Kevin Butler ads for Sony's various consoles ended in September 2012 after it was noted that the actor, Jerry Lambert, also appeared in an ad for Bridgestone tires playing Mario Kart Wii. Sony didn't like him associating with the competition, and they even sued Lambert for appearing in said Bridgestone commercial (though that was later settled out of court). After the lawsuit was settled, Lambert agreed not to appear in video game advertisements for two years.
- Actor Ben Curtis was known for playing "Steve" in Dell Computer's "Dude, You're Getting a Dell!" ad campaign that ran from 2000 to 2003, playing a perky, stoner-like character encouraging people to buy a Dell computer. Curtis was arrested for marijuana possession in February 2003. While his character was already on the way out according to Snopes, it certainly hastened his departure with Dell terminating his contract for "violation of company policy".
- Voice actor D.C. Douglas was canned by Geico in June 2010 after he left a voicemail message for a Tea Party group, specifically one called Freedom Works, suggesting that its members were mentally challenged (he has gone on record to say that he was asking, genuinely, if they employed/allowed membership for people legally deemed mentally challenged; that he left his real contact info on the message seems to support this since that'd be a very stupid thing to do if he were trolling). Ironically, though, this ended up backfiring for the group immensely, as it actually put Douglas in the public eye once again, getting him a good amount of work, including two Star Making Roles as Wesker and Legion in short succession, and giving him a lot of political ammunition (long story short, the group had exaggerated numerous details such as claiming he drunkenly called them with deliberate intent to offend, neither of which was true, and also appeared rather petty by going after him instead of focusing on genuine issues).
- Jared Fogle had a successful career as the spokesman for Subway, boasting that he lost 245 pounds by eating their sandwiches in their TV and print ads over a fifteen-year period. That ended in 2015 when Jared was arrested for possessing child pornography on his computer. Then it was revealed that he had previously paid for sex with a 16-year-old and sexually abused other minors. In the ensuing court case, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison. Adding to the humiliation, his charity foundation was also found to be a scam, and the director was found to be a sex offender as well. This led Subway to scrub their website of any association with him.
- In March 2011, comedian Gilbert Gottfried, who voiced the Aflac duck, posted very insensitive jokes about the massive 2011 earthquake in Japan on Twitter. Since Aflac does a lot of business in Japan, they were understandably not amused by these jokes and subsequently dropped him from their ads. The duck was ultimately recast with Daniel McKeague.
- Alice, a brand of German ISP Hansenet, had been personified since its launch in 2004 by Italian model Vanessa Hessler. In October 2011, she revealed she had been in a relationship with a son of Muammar Gaddafi and expressed support for the family. The company (which had been bought by Spanish telecommunications giant Telefónica a year ago) immediately fired her and retired the brand three months later as a result of Telefónica absorbing the company into O2 Germany.
- In March 2024 Doritos Spain immediately fired influencer Iván González Ranedo under the name Samantha Hudson after being revealed to have made sick pedophilic tweets towards a 12 year old.
- The original iteration of the long-running Sonic Drive-in commercials with a duo eating in a car and having Seinfeldian Conversations featured a couple played by actors Brian Huskey and Molly Erdman. Then a viewer saw Huskey in an Onion News Network video featuring a Black Comedy story about making Iraq more accessible to handicapped soldiers, which the viewer deemed Dude, Not Funny! since he ran a veterans blog and considered those in the military and veterans to be unacceptable targets. He angrily contacted Sonic. Even though Huskey already had a long career doing sometimes-edgy comedy even before the Sonic spots, Sonic decided they didn't want any controversy whatsoever and dropped both Huskey and Erdman. Luckily for Huskey, he would find success soon after as a writer and actor on Childrens Hospital. Erdman has gained notice as the creator of the humor website Catalog Living.
- Vinnie Jones appeared in a series of adverts for Bacardi in the early 2000s, until he was dropped following an air-rage incident in 2003.
- The United States Army's advertising campaign featuring Jonathan Majors was phased out in late March 2023 following his arrest on misdemeanor domestic violence charges. New ads in the campaign that didn't feature the actor started airing the following weekend.
- In 1996, British insurance company Churchill launched their long-running advertising campaign featuring Churchill the nodding dog, with Bob Mortimer voicing Churchill and his comedy partner Vic Reeves asking him questions offscreen. Reeves was dropped from the adverts in 2005 after being charged with drink-driving (the campaign primarily advertised car insurance), while Mortimer continued to voice Churchill until a rebranding in 2019.
- Similarly, in 2012, Martin Clunes, who appeared in Churchill's adverts that year, was dropped by the company after he got a driving ban. Clunes was replaced by Dawn French the following year.
- Clara Peller, the elderly lady who provided the iconic "Where's the Beef?" slogan in commercials for fast-food chain Wendy's in 1984, was dropped by the chain after only a year. This was due to her appearing in a commercial for Prego spaghetti sauce in 1985 that parodied the slogan, and ended with her claiming she "finally found" the beef in said sauce. Wendy's saw this as a violation of her Screen Actors' Guild contract, which stipulated that she could only appear in commercials for products that did not compete with theirs, and gave her the boot because they felt that the Prego commercial indicated that she had found the beef somewhere other than Wendy's. After being fired by Wendy's, Peller remained a minor celebrity for the final two years of her life until her death on August 11, 1987, Wendy's entered a two-year sales slump until they eventually started a highly successful ad campaign in 1989 featuring their founder Dave Thomas that ran until his death in 2002, in which consumer brand awareness of Wendy's eventually regained levels it had not achieved since Peller was fired.
- Tony Piloseno, an Ohio University student and senior sales associate for a Sherwin-Williams paint store in Athens, hosted a popular TikTok channel dedicated to mixing paint into different colors in an effort to market the brand. Sherwin-Williams responded by firing Piloseno, giving shifting reasons why: Piloseno's termination notice cited "wasting properties [and] facilities" and "seriously embarrass[ing] the Company or its products", while a spokeswoman cited a customer complaint. Piloseno's misfortune was short-lived, however, as his story quickly went viral and he landed a job with a paint company in Florida. You can get a better look at his story here.
- Robert Norman Smith of Alexander Keith's beer commercials fame was arrested for possession and distribution of child pornography. The commercials were also removed as a result.
- The pro tennis player Agnieszka Radwańska was a member and spokesperson for the Polish Catholic campaign "Nie wstydzę się Jezusa!" ("I'm not ashamed of Jesus!"). In 2013, she was kicked out after she posed nude for ESPN The Magazine.
- In October 2022, Kanye West lost ad deals with Vogue, CAA, Balenciaga, Gap, Foot Locker, TJ MAXX, and Adidas after making antisemitic comments. He later attempted to make a deal with Sketchers, only to be immediately kicked out due to the comments.
