BIG BRANDS. . BIGGER PRODUCTS . . BIGGEST FAILURES
Jan 25th, 2010 by admin
BIG BRANDS…… BIGGER PRODUCTS ………………BIGGEST FAILURES
The Marketing Hall of Shame
As rightly pointed out, in today’s cluttered world there is no difference between brand A’s product X and brand B ‘s product Y,there is only difference between BRAND A ,X,B and Y. Consumers make buying decisions based around the perception of the brand rather than the reality of the product
A long time ago in a galaxy far away, products were responsible for the fate of the company . When a company noticed that its sales were not increasing, it would come to one conclusion: its product was starting to fail. Now things have changed . Companies don’t blame the product, they blame the brand.
This article will give some examples of the biggest brand failures of all the time where big brands despite spending millions of dollars in conducting market research and understanding consumer behavior have launched such products which have given them a prominent place in the marketing hall of shame.
New Coke:
Coca cola is the most recognized brand in today’s world and enjoyed the same status decades ago as well. In the late 1950’s coke outsold Pepsi by a ratio of 1:5, but in the next decade brand Pepsi repositioned itself as a youth brand. In 1981, coke’s number one status was looking vulnearable. Brand coca cola was losing share not only to Pepsi but also some of the drinks produced by coca cola itself such as fanta and sprite.
As a result it started working on new formula and came up with new coke. However coca cola couldn’t have two products at the same time,so it scrapped the coca cola and introduced new coke in its place in April 1985.
The trouble was Coca Cola Company had underestimated the power of its first brand. As soon as the decision was announced a large percentage of the population immediately decided to boycott the new product. Sales eventually soared and the original product returned back in July 1985 and the production of new coke was stopped.
Ford Edsel
Product Edsel is certainly one of the biggest branding disaster to afflict the ford motor company. Edsel was launched with a lot of hype and fanfare,ads promoting it had begun to appear months previously before the teaser slogan : The Edsel is coming
When ford dealers started stocking the brand new Edsel ,they were told to keep the vehicles under cover ,if they did not they risked a fine and loss of their franchisee with their company.
However the product did not live up to its images as there were negative perceptions among people about its name and about its body structure .
Initial sales were disappointing to say the least. Ford had hoped to sell 200,000 of the 1958 model Edsels, but ended up only producing 68,045. In the end, in November 1959 ford printed last ever ad for the car and production was halted after that.
Kellogg’s cereal mates:
Cereal mates were small boxes of cereal packed with a container and a plastic spoon launched by kellogs ,a well known brand in the US cereal market . An increase in the working hours in US ,combined with the rise in fast food chains ,led Kellogg’s to believe that there was a demand for all in one breakfast product.
However despite Kellogg’s best efforts, the cereal mates brand was a major flop and in 1999,general mills became no 1 in cereal market and the product cereal mates was pulled off from the shelves. The reason for its failure were that it had warm milk in the container which was not appreciated by customers as it tasted terrible also it was very expensive in comparision with the kind of product it was offering
Persil Power:
In the mid 1990’s ,the competition between the two leading companies within the detergent sector in US,Unilever and P&G was intense and led to a quest for more and more innovative brand offering.
As a result,Unilever’s star brand persil launched a new product : persil power in may 1994. However the product was so strong that it not only removed the stains but also destroyed people’s cloth because of the presence of a chemical component.
As soon as stories of disintegrated clothes started to emerge,P&G ploughed their resources into an accusation laden publicity campaign which not only damaged persil power but also damaged the brand Unilever.
Finally the product was replaced by a new product persil new generation in the year 1995. the overall cost of this exercise was more than 200 million pounds.