When Marketing Goes Wrong

By

The power of effective marketing has a long history.In the 19th century,a new product,soap,became available to everyone in England at a low price.Every British soap producer faced fierce competition.Their answer was to focus on promotion and to come up with attractive visuals,catchy slogans and competitions to increase sales.Producers who were successful increased their profits because of a focus on product,price and promotion.

Yet it can all very easily go wrong.However clever the advertisement,a product that nobody wants is not going to sell.In the soft drinks sector,one manufacturer found to their dismay that their product had very poor sales in Australia - customers simply did not like the taste.One of the most well-known stories of failure is that of New Coke.Hoping to maintain its leading position,Coca-Cola changed its hundred-year-old secret formula.Tasting sessions had showed it was likely that ‘New Coke’would outsell its predecessor.The opposite happened.Customers stayed loyal to the original version and Coca-Cola switched back at great cost after only 79 days.It was a huge marketing mistake.

In the motor industry there are also stories of products that the public simply did not want.In 1957,Ford introduced a new model,Edsel.Following an investment of $400 million,it was promoted as an‘entirely new kind of car’ but the company sold only 25 percent of the cars they produced and lost $350 million.Customers complained about bad workmanship and the new product’s design.Ford found it difficult to produce the car efficiently and,unhelpfully,the car was in direct competition with other Ford vehicles.However,perhaps Ford’s biggest mistake was to misjudge demand from the American public.America had just entered an economic recession,so people had less money to spend.The last thing people wanted was a large,expensive car that used a lot of fuel.The public did not even like the name of the car! Product,price and promotion had all interacted to produce a marketing disaster.

On special promotions,companies may underestimate demand and spend a lot more than they budgeted for.A classic case is that of Hoover,a vacuum cleaner company,which offered two free air tickets to anyone who bought a vacuum cleaner for more than one hundred pounds.The tickets cost far more than the appliance.Sales increased 30% but the cost of the promotion was massive.The company lost over ￡40 million and in the end it was put up for sale.Similar examples include a fast-food company which gave away a free meal every time the United States won a medal in the Olympics (America was particularly successful that year)and a café chain which offered a free meal to anyone tattooed with their logo.

Customers may find a different meaning in publicity than the promoters intended.Promoters sometimes ignore cross-cultural differences and accidentally cause a great deal of offence which may have a huge impact on sales.Names,symbols and even colours are all possible danger areas.Pepsi Cola made an enormous mistake in some regions in changing the colour of its vending machines to light blue,a colour associated with death.Many advertising agencies have translators who make sure that brand names in one language do not translate as anything negative or rude.When they are not effective,the results can be costly as well as amusing.Some mistranslations include a fast-food company in China which advised customers to bite their fingers off,the Microsoft computer system Vista which means ‘ugly lady’in some languages and the name of a soft drink which translated as ‘toilet water’.

Some marketers even seem to make errors that any sensible person would not make.The jeweller Gerald Ratner once reduced the value of his company by ￡500 million when he suggested that his products were of very low quality and would not last as long as a cheap sandwich.He’s not the only one: the director of a cut-price clothing company once remarked that his customers only wore his suits in court after being arrested.Even the famous pop group,the Beatles,fell into this trap when they chose an extraordinary image of themselves covered in blood and chopped-up dolls to be used for an album cover picture - the image was quickly withdrawn and is now an expensive collectors’ item.And what about the ice cream producer who built an eight metre tall tower of ice in the middle of New York on a hot summer’s day and was surprised when it melted?

The message for successful marketing companies is never to make assumptions about your target audience unless you have carried out thorough market research - exactly what Ford did not do with the Edsel.Advertising is a powerful tool,but what was in the mind of the promotional designer might be interpreted differently by a customer reading the advertisement.This is shown by a well-remembered advertising blunder,from more than sixty years ago,for a new brand of cigarettes.In a brilliantly designed advert,a man walks miserably through the rain while melancholy music plays.He lights a cigarette,smiles sadly and the slogan runs ‘You’re never alone with a Strand’.Although people loved the advert and the accompanying music,they invariably associated the cigarettes with loneliness: only 3 percent of smokers ever bought the cigarettes.Even creative,memorable promotion can go disastrously wrong!

1.Make accurate forecasts about the financial implications of your promotion.

2.Use your common sense and avoid negative comments about your product.

3.Think about price and demand as well as your marketing strategy.

4.Ensure you are really giving your potential customers exactly what they want.

5.Present your product in a way that will appeal to the international market.

6.They loved the promotion but for all the wrong reasons ______

7.Even the company who produced it described it as low quality ______

8.Its failure was the result of a range of a number of different factors ______

9.A change in design resulted in widespread disappointment ______

10.Its brand name had the potential to upset many female consumers ______

A.Ratner jewellery E.Hoover vacuum cleaners

B.New Coke F.Ford Edsel

C.Pepsi Cola G.Microsoft Vista

D.Strand cigarettes H.British soap

11.The secret to successful marketing is the development of new products.______

12.Customer preferences vary widely from one market to the next.______

13.Online promotion is likely to be the most successful way to sell.______

14.Minor changes to how a product is promoted can result in marketing failure.______

rs

1.Paragraph D

2.Paragraph F

3.Paragraph C

4.Paragraph B

5.Paragraph E

6.D

7.A

8.F

9.B

10.G

11.NO

12.YES

13.NOT GIVEN

14.YES