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Contents

Failure - The Best Coach 2No Kin(dle) in Microsoft 3Brand Amitabh 4Fizzled Out 5Brand Successes vs Brand Failures 7The Mona’Lisa’ Frown 8

Knock Knock There are not just brand failures! There are different types of them – Classic failures, Idea Failures, Extension Failures, PR Failures, Culture failures, People failures, Rebranding failures, Tired brands.. Read the Knock Knock boxes to find out more..

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“Six six six and it’s balle balle balle in the crowd”

Screaming at the top of his voice was Ravi Shastri, the famous Indian cricket commentator and dancing their heart out were cricket fans all over India, when Yuvraj Singh went on an absolute carnage. He had smashed six of every delivery in the penultimate over of the T-20 world cup match in Durban, between India and England. But the story actually starts a fortnight back when Yuvraj was hit for 5 sixes in an over by Mascarenhas. At this point, he could have gotten into a shell and let the shame hang around his neck like the albatross in the Ancient Mariner. But champions don’t behave like that, do they? An even more determined to perform Yuvraj who had learned from his mistakes banked upon his strengths to get back at the competitor, picked himself up within a week and the results are right in front of us.Let’s look at a few new product failures and hope to learn something from the mistakes of corporate giants.

Virgin cola –Brand extension failure

From airlines to financial services Virgin is one company that seems to be able to apply its brand name to anything. In an article in 2000 the writer described how one could ‘live a virgin life’.“Every morning you can wake up to Virgin Radio, put on Virgin clothes and make-up, drive to work in a car bought through Virgin using money from your Virgin bank account. On your way home you can pop into a Virgin Active gym. At weekends you

can use a Virgin mobile phone or Virgin’s Internet service to find out what is on at the local Virgin cinema. As you head off on holiday on a Virgin train or plane, you can play Virgin video games stopping only to buy your Virgin vodka in duty free. If you meet someone on the beach and one thing leads to another, the Virgin condoms are in the Virgin hotel minibar. When love blossoms, you get married with Virgin Brides and buy your first house with a Virgin mortgage and get a joint Virgin pension.”In 1990 Branson made his ambitions clear and wanted to enter the cola market and compete hard with coke and pepsi. Inspite of the fact that Branson was successful in everything he did many experts believed it to be an extremely risky move. Some even said ‘It would be easier to make a snowman in July in Florida than to take on Coke and Pepsi’. But Branson loved challenges and launched Virgin Cola and heavily promoted it. The cola turned out to be a huge failure inspite of the fact that it was priced 15-20 cents less than coke and pepsi.A major part of the problem was distribution,as coke and Pepsi blocked virgin from getting crucial shelf space and advertised their product extensively.

Lessons learned

1) It’s important to take on your competitors at their weakness and not at their strength especially if they are extremely strong and non-complacent as coke and Pepsi.

2) Distribution is extremely important. If you do not get the shelf space you have lost the battle

Brand culture failure-Kellogg’s in India

Kellogg’s was a big name in the US and UK .it’s annual revenue being US $ 6 billion .The globally successful brand was facing tough competition from the brand cheerios. Thus, it decided to venture into new markets and India was their obvious choice as India was a country with over 950 million inhabitants, 250 million of whom were middle class, and a completely untapped market potential. In 1994 Kellogg’s launched its cornflakes investing us $ 65 million. The whole concept of eating cereal breakfast was new in India and Kellogg’s had to promote the idea of breakfast cereals along with its product. Inspite of the initial high sales, the product was a major failure as it was perceived to have a high price. Kellogg’s refused to reduce the price which was thrice the nearest competitor’s price. A major reason for Kellogg’s failure was that it was blinded by the figures, that, one fourth of the people in India were the middle c l a s s a n d w o u l d b u y t h e product .However India is a diverse country and buying habits and eating habits vary widely across its 25 states. the local competitors raked in the benefits.

Lessons learned

1) Do your cul tura l homework correctly

2) D o n ’ t u n d e r e s t i m a t e l o c a l competitors

3) Remember that square pegs don’t fit into round holes.

It’s important to learn from one’s own failure but far more important to learn from the failures of others. To quote Thomas Alva Edison, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”

Failure -The best coach - Abhijit Aswath

What’s in a name?    Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porn magazine. In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” came out as “Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead.”

In recent times, very few products in the tech world have failed like the Kin, Microsoft’s teen-focused phone which was launched in mid-April, 2010.

Launched in two versions, Kin One and Kin Two, it was supposed to be Microsoft’s culmination of a billion dollars of investment and more than two years of development. Billed as a precursor to Windows Phone 7, the Kin positioned itself as a phone which was built around social networking; so m u c h s o , t h a t c r i t i c s s a i d i t compromised on features like speaker clarity, essential to any phone. Another USP was the camera bundled with the Kin, especially with the Kin Two boasting of HD recording. Aimed at a

target audience in the 15 to 30 age group it seemed that Microsoft had got its recipe right.

So why did it fail?

Several sources cite the price to be a major issue. In the $150-200$ range with the plans adding extra cost, it definitely didn’t appeal to the target audience. Infighting within Microsoft since Kin was essentially an acquired product through Danger Inc and outfighting with Verizon resulted in inevitable problems. Microsoft also wanted to prove the Windows Mobile platform on a device which essentially didn’t require the features that such a platform offered. It wasn’t meant to be

a smart-phone, at least not in the Blackberry sense of the term.

Perhaps the reason for failure was best put forth by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: “You've got to be bold, you've got to look forward and you've got to stay focused. Kin was neither -- with 20-20 hindsight -- bold enough relative to where the market's going and it just defocused activity from Windows Phone."

Tough lesson learnt, especially because he lost half the bonus he could have got because of it. With the recent launch of Windows Phone 7, Ballmer will definitely be looking at gaining lost ground.

No Kin(dle) in Microsoft - Saurab Nair

Knock Knock.. Who’s there? Extension Failures

A classic example is the Harley Davidson perfume. Harley is a brand which is exceedingly masculine, has a very loyal customer base and the concept of perfume simply did not fit in at all with what the brand stood for. This led to

their experiencing the sweet smell of failure. Brand extensions fail if they tend to devalue the brand or contrast with the brand identity. Other such

extensions which ended up as failures include Ponds toothpaste, Xerox data systems.

Today, Amitabh Bachchan is an iconic superstar, however, this was not always the case. There was a time in the late eighties and early nineties when the Bachchan brand faltered and it took some time for it regain its niche, albeit a different one.

Typical symptoms of brand failure: It starts off with pressure on the financials, the need to take immediate action and immense internal conflict in the organisation. What follows is dras t i c ac t ion inc lud ing sa l e s p r o m o t i o n s , i r r e l e v a n t b r a n d extensions, diversions into unrelated target groups and lack of focus on innovation and R&D. The brand gets diluted and loses its competitive value proposition. To recover from such a cycle is indeed very difficult and few brands have been able to revive themselves from this churn.

Although his debut and the following 10 films bombed at the box office, the potential of the Bachchan brand was recognised by industry stalwarts like Ramesh Sippy, Yash Chopra and Manmohan Desai who acted like his brand managers.

The niche of the “angry young man” was carved out for him by these brand managers.His looks, acting and dialogue delivery (brand attributes) connected with the audience as the need of the hour in the seventies was for a rebel hero as the youth in the country were unemployed and it was a time of political turmoil. This image was strengthened by and propelled the success of movies like Sholay and Don.

Even though a brand would like to live forever the brand has to be rethought and reinvented continuously to keep up with the changing demographics,

environment and attitudes of its target consumers. The Bachchan brand lost its steam as the brand managers did not actively work on this reinvention. The environment changed and from the earlier days of social uprising the outlook of the youth had become more positive and optimistic. Movies like Jadugar and Ganga, Jamuna, and Saraswati just didn’t have the same impact and AB became a less effective brand.

Brand extensions into unrelated areas where there are no synergies are one of the prime reasons for brand failure. So after failing to innovate, Mr. Bachchan decided to further weaken his brand by se t t ing up Ami tabh Bachchan Corporation Limited (ABCL), hoping to extend the brand over wider areas. His acting expertise could not be leveraged in the corporate field and the extension did nothing at all to enhance the parent brand. Indeed, the company went bankrupt and hurt the brand’s ability to perform its core functions.

As if one unsuccessful brand extension was not enough, he followed it up with another by venturing into politics. Though the target group identified with the brand but there is not much a brand can do without inept branding and marketing support.

He tried to return to movies after this b u t a l l h i s e n d e a v o u r s l i k e Mrityudatta, Lal Badshah and Major Saab did badly.

It seemed that Bachchan was finished. And then came Kaun Banega Crorepati, which finally succeeded in recycling the brand.

Part of the resurrection is thanks to Bachchan’s own mass appeal in the

role as a classy yet not smug host. His stature, sense of drama, bilingual eloquence (English and Hindi) and burnished baritone make for a brilliant TV host. He is the consummate performer – in sync with the show and an incredible charismatic force.

During its heyday, the Bachchan brand was highly differentiated and relevant to the social-economic-political context. When it started losing out on differentiation and relevance, the handlers’ unwillingness to depart from the proven formula damaged the brand further.

Now, ironically, the Bachchan brand has transitioned from the angry young underdog fighting for social justice, to a caring achiever who, having journeyed from rags (in a manner of speaking) to riches, is willing to hold your hand and guide you along the same path. He’s the striver who succeeded and the people love him for it.

That Bachchan is again a force to be reckoned with is proved by the string of recent honors coming his way both domestically and internationally. Last month he was decorated with the Padma Shri – one of India’s highest civilian honors – by the president. Bachchan's wax likeness was recently unveiled at Madame Tussaud's wax museum in London – the only Indian film star to be so honored. He has also been listed as the country's most powerful film star by Forbes.com.

The Bachchan magic lives on. And, if properly exploited in the future, so will the brand.

Sources: “A brand in the life of Bachchan” by Raju Bist ” “http://www.brandchannel.com/features_effect.asp?pf_id=35”

Brand Amitabh - Mehak Gulati

Knock Knock.. Who’s there? Classic Failures

These  are  those  failures  which  are  the  most  well-­‐known  and  are  learned  from.  Examples  include  the  Ford  Edsel  and  the  New  Coke.

Coke is one of the iconic brands of this world – a much touted success story. It enjoys significant brand equity, and one of the best recognized brands by consumers around the world. But as they say, even an elephant can trip and fall. The launch of the New Coke in 1985 is one of the biggest marketing blunders of the previous century and certainly, one of the most well-known brand failures ever. To understand how and why this happened and to learn from it, it is important to look at the background of the launch.

The How?

The Coke-Pepsi rivalry was predominant since the 60’s. Coke’s market share was steady while Pepsi’s market share was steadily increasing due to its positioning as a brand for youth. Consumers, most of whom were youth, changed to Pepsi thus reducing Coke’s market share from 60% post World War II to a mere 24% in 1983.

One of the major factors which led to the launch of New Coke was the success of Diet Coke, launched in 1982. Diet Coke tasted similar to Pepsi and rose to rank 3 in consumer liking after Coca Cola and Pepsi. It was at this time, that Pepsi introduced the ‘Pepsi Challenge’ where consumers were blind-tasted between Coke and Pepsi. Pepsi popularized the fact that even sworn Coke fans preferred Pepsi to Coke in the blind taste tests. This put a lot of pressure on Coke and Coke concluded that Coke was losing out due to its taste, also since Diet Coke was successful.

Coke reacted by launching New Coke in 1985, retiring the old Coke to prevent cannibalization.

Immediately after the launch, there were protests from the American public as Coke was considered an integral part of the American identity. The company had under estimated the number of consumers shifting from the old Coke to the new one. People even stocked up on the last reserves of Old Coke left on the shelves and resold it for hiked up prices.

Within 87 days, Coke was forced to reintroduce the old Coke by calling it the ‘Classic Coke’. By this time Pepsi was the market leader. However, the sentiment involved with the Old Coke helped Classic Coke regain its lost market share and climb to the number 1 position again. People who liked the New Coke bought the Diet Coke as it was similar and New Coke was abandoned. The market share of New Coke reduced, and it was renamed Coca-Cola II much later in 1992.

However, the whole episode did more to position and define Coca-Cola as a brand embodying values distinct from Pepsi than any deliberate effort to do so probably could have done. Bottles and cans continued to be called ‘Coca-Cola Classic’ until 2009 when the company dropped the word "Classic" to avoid confusion with the younger generation.

The Why?

The New Coke was launched after a considerable amount of market research over a period of two years. Coke also spent almost $4 million to perfect the taste of New Coke and conducted 20000 blind tests to determine that people preferred the taste of New Coke to any other available beverage. This makes it hard to say that it failed due to lack of proper research. However, misinterpretation of the research result may have played a significant role in its failure. During focus group discussions held about New Coke, there were many people who voiced disapproval at their Coke being replaced with a new one. Loyal Coke drinkers even went on to say that they would stop drinking Coke completely. However, these opinions were conveniently ignored under peer pressure.

Fizzled Out - Ayshwarya R. Vikram

Why did these brand extensions fail?

The blind taste test was error-prone since consumers only took a sip of the Cola. However, during actual consumption, people liked the not-so-sweet taste of Coke, since the quantity was much larger when buying it in a can/bottle.

Coke had risen to Pepsi’s bait and sacrificed their key brand asset:

Originality. This theme was driven into consumers using various campaigns over the past decades such as ‘The only thing like Coca-Cola is Coca-Cola itself’ and ‘It’s the real thing’. The promotion for the New Coke called it the ‘New Real Thing’, but this was tantamount to telling customers that the drink they loved over the past decades was not the real thing.

Coke went purely by the taste tests to determine the launch of New Coke and severely underestimated the power of Old Coke. They however, failed to fall back on the basics of the Value Delivery System, which would have shown that taste had very less influence in the choice of consumers for Coke. Coca Cola had ignored the sentimental value which its loyal American consumers had towards the brand. Their mistake was that they went ahead with New Coke with focus on only one of the 4P’s – the Product.

Conclusion

Coke did not understand the needs, expectations, emotional attachments and associations that consumers had for the brand. The use of a brand research coupled with a market research which was not so narrowly focused could have provided insights before fatal mistakes were committed. This also shows that market research should be done carefully as minor mistakes like not revealing important information or asking questions in detail can cause misleading results. It is very important to define the goal for market research correctly. While launching a product or making any changes to existing products, it is important to figure out the interests of all stakeholders in order to anticipate reactions.

Knock Knock.. Who’s there? Culture Failures

Culture failures typically occur when companies confuse the era of globalisation with `that of homogenisation. A successful product in one geography may need to be altered

`to cater to the specific tastes, values and beliefs of the geography it’s being transplanted to. The most famous failure is that of Pepsi in Taiwan where it translated ‘Come alive with the Pepsi generation’ to Taiwanese where it read ‘Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead’. Another classic example is that of Gerber baby food in Africa,

where western companies generally put the picture of what is inside on the packaging since consumers are not well versed in English. However Gerber put their usual

``packaging with a baby boy on the cover, thus leading to the failure of the product. Also, `in Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan 'finger-lickin' good' came out as 'eat

your fingers off.'

In 2000, this brand decided to stretch its wings. The result of that decision

was something which was a dismal failure. Can you guess what it was?

Recently Pepsico rebranded

Tropicana. Can you guess why it failed?

Brands are basically the space in the minds of consumer which help them guide during the buying decision process. They were required by the market when many production units started producing same type of product in bulk and they required to persuade consumers to buy their products, leaving other available options. So, when brand identity was added to product, it became synonymous to some human being type of thing. It became just like the case when we identify a person with her name and associate some qualities to her.

But here the brand persona is not created by the product itself, it is created by the marketers. Sometimes they fail to recognize the values which can be rightly associated with the brand and communicate something else, which is bound to create confusion in consumer’s mind. Here is the root cause of most of the brand failures where marketers fail to communicate the perception which consumer sees in the product. Some reasons why a brand failure happens are

Brand amnesia - Coke forgot what it stood for and thus launched younger version of New Coke and failed miserably after historical market research.

Brand Megalomenia - Brands see their success as phenomenal and try to enter in unrelated territory like Harley Davidson did while entering the perfumes market.

Brand irrelevance - As markets evolve, the brands fall behind if they are not able to evolve simultaneously, like Kodak remained behind in digital photography market.

Branders live with many kinds of myth while designing branding strategy. They believe that if a product is good, it will definitely sell, probability of success is more than of failure both of which are equally wrong. Most of the new products or renovations fail by default, if the branding strategy is not carefully designed and executed. Big companies believe that, they can succeed with anything and everything they try while history says that even big companies had had their share of failures in terms of brands. In the market, herd mentality rules, in which companies see their competitors doing something new, follow the way without realizing it can go the wrong way and all of them reach the cliff-end the same time. Marketers believe that the more they spend on advertising, the more strong will be the brand identity but here also strategy comes as a hurdle which if not taken care of, the same advertising ruins the brand image. Advertising only supports brand image and restrengthens the memory. It can’t build the image from the scratch. If there is some fundamental problem with the product, any amount of advertising and campaigning will not work because once consumer uses it, they form their own perception. Now it is up to marketer to identify that perception and work according to it.

To give the discussion a lighter turn we can see at the pictures where due to different meanings in different languages, the jargons ate the c a m p a i g n s i t s e l f . L i k e , t h e Scandinavian company Electrolux came to America with the slogan “Nothing sucks like Electrolux” and Pepsi went to Taiwan with its young generation slogan “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” which came out as “Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead.”

Do failures stop the market?

Even when there are so many failures, it is not that companies have stopped branding their products and returning the generic way. It is just not possible in this highly competitive market. It is very well necessary to brand the product but along with it, to prevent failures, it is important to learn from competitors and similar products mistakes and go with a brand extension which matches previous brand image. Big companies only have the advantages of having deep pockets and surviving losses but for newcomers and small companies, a single brand failure becomes fatal and the failed perception in consumer’s mind stops them from trying any new products coming from the same channel.

Brand Failures vs Brand Successes - Jyotsna Kumari

This product is the shining example of a brand failure.

Can you identify the brand and how it failed?

Apple Lisa is a perfect example of paradise gone horribly wrong for Apple. A pet project of Steve Jobs that promised to change the way businesses looked at computing. Lisa, introduced in 1983, was the first system to promise a true user friendly experience. The first personal computer that had a Graphical User Interface, which was developed using the prototype developed at the Mecca of technological innovation, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre(PARC). It was the first PC to use the Windows, Icon, Menu, Pointer (the WIMP), a technology that used mouse as an input device. The Lisa was a device that was designed to reduce the amount of user training by having a standard method of interaction with all kinds of data. It followed a document-centric approach and the brightest innovation that Lisa had was that the Operating System came bundled with 7 applications, together known as the Lisa Office System. The seven applications, LisaWrite, LisaCalc, LisaList, LisaProject, LisaDraw, LisaPaint, and LisaTerminal were designed for an office environment.

The failure of Lisa highlights the importance of creating the products for the target segment. Lisa was a fun device to work with and a sea change from the devices that were built by IBM and even Apple’s previous systems. But the Lisa was a system designed for businesses and businesses felt that the $10,000 a piece price tag does not justify the functionality that the system provided. Lisa became a system that was highly appreciated but was confined to the walls of showrooms. It became a system that people craved for but never actually bought. Businesses continued to buy the IBM PCs.

Lisa used a 5.25 inch floppy drive. These were built by Apple and required special devices to read and write and their failure rate was very high. The Lisa ran on a Motorola processor which could not handle the processes running and thereby made the system very slow. Moreover the system was built to perform multi-tasking, something which added to the woes of an already taxed processor.

Apple products have always been known to be aesthetically pleasing but

somehow Lisa was never appreciated for its design and looks. It was felt that the system was very bulky. The monitor and big floppy drives were all mounted in the same case and the floppy drives were fixed beside the monitor. Due to the size of the floppy drive, the monitor seemed extremely small and this made the entire system look unwieldy.

The introduction of Macintosh drove the final nail in the coffin for Lisa. Macintosh used the same GUI as Lisa and was priced much lower than Lisa at about $2,500. It was faster than Lisa and solved most of the problems that Lisa faced. Moreover, Macintosh rode on Steve Jobs’ popularity. The initial buzz that was created by the ‘1984’ ad during the super bowl game ensured that Macintosh had a brilliant start. This made sure that everyone bought Macintosh and Lisa was slowly pushed into oblivion.

An advantage that the technology as a sector enjoys which might not be true in other industries is that even though a product turns out to be a failure, parts of it can be re used and the same is true for Lisa. The GUI which was used in Lisa is till date used in a similar form in today’s computers and the commercial success of Macintosh ensured that Apple lived and today’s generation saw the iPod revolution.

The Mona’Lisa’ Frown - Sashank Rajpurohit

Knock Knock.. Who’s there? PR Failures

Almost all brands go through a crisis situation sometime during their lifecycle. `However, bad PR can lead to a brand’s demise if crisis situations are not handled

well. An example is Pan Am airlines who never recovered from the crash of its flight in Scotland in 1988 and ultimately went bankrupt. Pan Am was not able to leverage on its spectacular service record since 1927 effectively and hence went bankrupt in

1991.