Poor Marketing Examples of Good and Poor

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 was an inadvertent admission that its primary competitor Pepsi had won the "cola wars," something the Choice of a New Generation quickly took advantage of when doing battle with the soda pop originator." (U.S. 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 failed to entice with its high price-tag and lackluster design and which suffering from limited quality control. (U.S. Data Corporation, p. 1) What most distinguishes the Edsel is its cautionary allegory for manufacturers of all shapes and sizes. Poor quality control and a failure of market research can translate into an expensive boondoggle such as the Edsel, which ended its production run only three years after its 1957 release. (U.S. Data Corporation, p. 1)

Good Marketing:

Examples of good marketing are often easier to recall simply because this is what good marketing does. For instance, like them or hate them, the Progressive Insurance commercials featuring the red-headed spokesperson Flo have obviously been successful. The recurrence of the character and campaign ad nauseum is evidence that the strategy has worked. Slightly annoying, gently humorous and readily memorable, the Progressive Insurance commercials illustrate campaign success in their continuity.

A similar degree of success may be attributed to a company like McDonalds for forging characters and spokes figures like Ronald McDonald who have been used in perpetuity for more than half-a-century. McDonald's has succeeded in connecting its product and experience with a host of colorful characters and images that remain embedded in the memory and culture of its patrons.