Poor Marketing
Examples of Good and Poor Marketing
Marketing is a unique science. Offering a quality product or having a recognized brand name are neither guarantees of success in the retail or service industries. The discussion here on both good and poor examples of marketing will demonstrate the high variance in results which are instigated by different marketing strategies.
Poor Marketing:
Perhaps the most famous example of a major brand name stumbling terribly in a large marketing campaign is Coca-Cola, which attempted to introduce 'New Coke' to the marketplace in the mid-80s. The U.S. Data Corporation accurately describes this as the worst marketing blunder of all time because it seemed to so aggressively undermine exactly what made the product special and distinctive. In the Data Corporation's analysis, "what made New Coke such a bad marketing idea is that it essentially celebrated 100 years of a popular product by throwing out the formula people had grown to love and replacing it with something unproven. Its creation...
Data Corporation, p. 1)
Undermining consumer tastes is not the worst mistake a company can make though. There are yet issues or racial sensitivity to account for as well. Plays (2013) describes one baffling instance in which Abercrombie & Fitch attempted to court Asian-American youths by marketing t-shirts depicting a host of highly insensitive caricatured images of 'Orientals' which seemed to be drawn directly from anti-Japanese World War II propaganda. After harsh criticism and an apology, the company withdrew the line but not before demonstrating that poor marketing can extend from general insensitivity to or unawareness of the world around the product.
Close behind New Coke would be the Ford Edsel, the famously expensive project which ultimately produced a car offering nothing new to a crowded marketplace, which…
