Sample Response: Failed Brands
It may seem odd that you have been asked to consider brand failures as a topic. Why
not instead concentrate on one of the handful of superbrands such as BMW or Heinz or
Perrier which are definitive of their part of the marketplace – the brands that all other
luxury cars, baked beans or bottled water producers aspire to creating and owning?
Well, for one thing researching brand failures possibly proved a lot more fun. It is
enjoyable conducting forensic investigations over the corpse of a product or service that
was meant to be the next big thing but instead went phutt! And often because of some
flaw in their original conception that eventually all the advertising and marketing in the
world could not offset.
Then there is the other good reason offered by Robert M. McMath in his book What
Were They Thinking: “If we are ignorant about the mistakes of the past, we are indeed
bound to repeat them.” Acting on this principle, McMath began a collection of failed
brands that has now become a mini-museum of failed innovation overseen and
maintained by the US-based brand consultancy Arbour Strategy. It is this collection that
was recently the subject of a BBC Radio documentary and which suggested the idea of
brand failure for this assignment.
There is a further reason. According to some estimates most brands fail – up to eight in
ten of them soon after they are launched and another one in ten vanish in the first five
years following their introduction. So – there is a great deal of material to research out
there.
What is a brand?
It may sound a simple question but brands are extraordinarily complex and (sometimes)
fragile. “A brand” according to one definition is “the descriptive verbal attributes and
concrete symbols such as a name, logo, slogan, and design scheme that convey the
essence of a company, product or service.” Certainly brands are multi-valent: the
meeting-place of all sorts of ideas, associations and connotations that amount to
something akin to a personality. In fact it is not at all outlandish to talk of a brand having
a ‘personality’ thanks to the accumulated and collective impact of advertising, marketing
and packaging that help build the public’s consciousness of a product, service or
company. In short people do harbour a kind of affection for certain brands they prefer
and trust granting them all sorts of near-human attributes.
Sofa so good
Take for example a company selling furniture whose advertising rather than exploring
the processes involved in making their sofas chooses instead to emphasize the fun, rest,
romance and solitary indulgence that will flow to the customer from investing in that
piece of furniture. In time the success of that product or products will rest on the extent
to which consumers identify or seek to emulate the lifestyle(s) seemingly within reach
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once the sofa has been purchased and delivered. Of course, no one but an idiot
believes that a brand of furniture will bring you happy family life, solitary contentment or
fabulous embraces with a desirable partner but such associations certainly do not
detract from the brand and help hard-wire the brand’s name into our consciousness. Of
course – there’s plenty that can go wrong. If the long-awaited goods arrive faulty or
damaged or prove less comfortable than they seemed to be on that January sale-day
then immediately the glamour’s off. Suddenly the luxury sofa far from being a passport
to desirable experiences becomes a problem needing solving and all that expensive
marketing and advertising has gone to waste.
Familiarity does not breed contempt
You should not have been researching this topic for long before you came across the
New Coke debacle of April 1985. There are extensive discussions of the story online for
example at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7209828/ but in short the story concerns the
attempt by Coca-Cola to monkey with its age-old, sure-fire product in an effort to engage
with young people seemingly slipping away to imbibe upstart brands like Pepsi, and
even some of Coca-Cola’s own alternative brands such as Fanta and Sprite.
It may have made some sense, but the reaction of the public was dramatic and negative.
The change was described as being akin ‘to trampling on the American flag’ and there
were stories of a black-market springing up for old coke and people ‘laying down’ crates
of old Coke much as they might store vintage wine. It didn’t help that 1985 marked the
first centenary for Coca-Cola or that so much of the marketing of the product over the
previous hundred years had emphasized its ‘originality’ through, for example, the ‘it’s the
real thing’ strap-line to its print and broadcast advertising. No slouches Coca-Cola, they
quickly recognized the problem they had on their hands and by July had junked the idea
– but too late for this not to become one of the most expensive marketing errors ever. In
the end, according to Sam Craig, professor of marketing and international business at
the Stern School of Business at New York University (interviewed in 2005) Coca-Cola's
error was not asking their customers a critical question: “Do you want a new Coke? By
failing to ask that critical question, they had to backpedal very quickly.”
So – lesson number one, if it’s not broken do not try to fix it.
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Breaking the Bond With Customers
The Coca-Cola story is, according to brand consultant Matt Haig, the classic example of
a company ‘breaking the bond (often hard-fought for) between the customer and the
brand’. In his book ‘brand failures’ he identifies a number of factors that can contribute
to such disasters:
Brand Amnesia - when something is done to harm the ‘personality’ of an established
brand. The Coca-Cola story fits snugly into this category.
Brand Ego – When a brand gets too big for its boots and attempts to expand into
markets that it has no business being in. A classic in this bracket might be Virgin Brides
– which was capsized by its name and also the sight of Richard Branson in drag as the
key launch-day photo-opportunity – horrible!
Another great example, dates back to 2003 and concerns Kit-Kat’s attempts to broaden
their appeal – as if that were possible or necessary with the UK’s most famous and
popular confectionary – with a whole array of new ‘flavours’. Among these were
‘strawberries and cream’, ‘passion fruit’ and ‘mango’. In the winter came ‘Christmas
pudding’ and ‘tiramisu’. The experiments flopped. In just two years, KitKat's overall
sales in the U.K. dropped 18 percent. This led to a retreat with Nestle recently
abandoning most of its exotic flavors. The experience has become a lesson in the perils
of trying to push new versions of much-loved brands too hard.
Brand Deception
Relationships suffer if the trust goes and clearly if a brand becomes associated with a lie
or lies then it can quickly lose all credibility in the marketplace. The example that Haig
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offers is that of the Sony marketing executives who invented a film critic David Manning
and put favourable comments into his fictional mouth in order to then have them to place
on the posters and advertisements promoting the movie A Knight’s Tale and other films.
It may not have been very chivalrous but it is an extreme example of the kind of
manipulation that goes on with quotations lifted from real reviewers’ articles which are
then cropped to provide a more positive slant to a film – a practice that undermines the
value of such marketing across the whole sector.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/1374866.stm
In the end Sony had to pay out $1.5m in compensation to cinema-goers who may have
been ‘tricked’ into going to the film by the bogus reviews.
Companies are getting more canny and so when problems arise with a product they tend
to be quite upfront about the issue and try then to make marketing capital by being seen
to be acting quickly to turn things around. That said, there have been lots of cases
where companies have denied problems for years and years because they have to – the
problem being so absolutely intrinsic to the product – for example, cigarettes.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2945705/Tobacco-companies-must-own-up-tolies.html
PR Failures
The carefully constructed ‘arches’ logo and Ronald McDonald character are designed to
say a great deal about the sort of cheap and cheerful experience awaiting the customer
of that famous hamburger chain’s restaurants. The one thing they are not meant to
evoke is any thought of bullying mega-corporations attempting to silence critics and
using a sledge hammer to achieve it. Unfortunately, this is exactly how McDonalds
came across, thanks to their 313-day action against Helen Steel and David Morris who
had published a pamphlet in 1984 criticizing the company for poor working practices and
selling unhealthy food. By pursuing the case, McDonald’s managed to turn the McLibel
two into folk heroes and also gave their criticisms enormous publicity. The topic is
worthy of an entire assignment on its own and you can find out more at
http://www.mcspotlight.org/case/
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In his book Brand Failures Matt Haig identifies a number of other brands that suffered as
a result of poor public relations. These include
EXXON – thanks to the Exxon Valdez
Perrier - thanks to benzene contamination.
Your Own Brand Failure
You were also invited to come up with a guaranteed brand failure. To do this, study a
particular product type in order to grasp the sorts of ideas and associations normally
linked to these products.
Then consider the process involved in producing the product or the more unglamorous
aspects of the product’s purpose. For example – consider the problems a paper
handkerchief might face if it was called ‘snot’ or ‘mucus’. Doubtless such a name tells
the truth about a product but it is a truth that people do not want to be reminded of when
they buy a paper hankie.
Of course, you could also go for a mad concept such as ‘garlic cake’ – one of the Arbour
Strategy brand failure exhibits which underlines how there are some taste combinations
that are just too outré for people to respond to.
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Garlic Cake
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