5 Of The Greatest Marketing Disasters In History & What We Can Learn From It

In this post, I share with you 5 of the greatest marketing disasters in history & what we can learn from it. Marketing blunders and disasters happen, and these can give future marketers and aspiring ones to learn from them and avoid the same mistake.

Everyone makes mistakes, even marketers. Usually, we learn from them and move on with our lives, maybe escaping without the general public noticing. But what happens to those companies that make mistakes on a much greater scale and cost their company millions in clout or even dollars?

Every company has a marketing budget that they use to pay the best and brightest in ad campaign creation to create terrific new branding initiatives, slogans and commercials. The goal is to always motivate the customers to buy more of their products or services. While it often works out, sometimes these companies fall flat on their faces. Some setbacks are easy to recover from while others can lead to the downfall of an entire brand.

Even the most reputable companies make marketing blunders which they have to pay for in many ways. There are many different reasons why something like this can potentially happen.  As customers we may not often realize, but marketing campaigns actually play a big part in whether or not we make purchases.

Here are 5 of the greatest marketing disasters in history & what we can learn from it:

1. Coca-Cola

In 1985, Coca-Cola tried to introduce a new, sweeter version of their beverage to combat their new competitor, Pepsi. As people preferred the taste of Pepsi over Coke in blind taste tests, Coke felt the need to regain market share with a new recipe. So, how did it turn out?

Not well. Public response was so negative that people were hoarding the old Coke and selling it on the black-market for grossly inflated prices!

Why were people so upset? Coke’s brand embodied classic American traditions and people didn’t want new a version of Coke. They wanted that classic beverage whose secret recipe was guarded under lock and key in Georgia for so many years! After finally retiring the “New Coke” recipe, sales of the old classic Coke were significantly higher.

What do we take away from this marketing mistake? Learn what your customers want before spending time and money on a top-secret product or service change!

2. The New York Times

In December 2011, the New York Times sent an email to people who recently canceled their subscription asking them to reconsider by offering them a discount to sweeten the deal. Sounds like a great idea to get a customer back, right? Too bad an employee accidentally sent it to 8 million subscribers instead of the list of recent unsubscribed users they had.

Subscribers instantly assumed that this spam email was the result of hackers and some were even mad that they weren’t getting the same discount as a loyal customer. Of course, employees responded immediately apologizing and telling people it was an unfortunate human error. Still, this is every email marketer’s nightmare and it serves as a much-needed reminder to always double check your list before clicking ‘Send’ on any campaign.

3. The Cartoon Network Bomb Scare

In 2007, The Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming block launched what would become the penultimate example of a guerrilla marketing gone wrong. In a clandestine effort to promote the first full-length film based on the absurdist cartoon series Aqua Teen Hunger Force, a group of artists posted these Lite Brite-like circuit boards featuring the show’s pixelated Mooninite characters Ignignokt and Err on public structures around the city of Boston. What they and Cartoon Network’s parent company Turner Broadcasting failed to take into account was that such a stunt wouldn’t be possible in the age of 9/11 without causing an incident. Many mistook the unorthodox ads as bombs and Turner had to pay $2 million to the Boston Police Department for the resulting investigation.

Guerrilla Marketing can appear random and spontaneous to the public, but it shouldn’t when the local authorities have to get involved. Always inform the local police of what you’re doing and get the permits and licenses that are necessary from the city to pull off such public spectacles. One of the mistakes the PR firm behind this campaign made was that they still didn’t tell the police or Homeland Security that this was being used for an ad campaign for a movie.

4. Ford Edsel

Often called the worst car of all-time, the Edsel is one of those legendary failures of automotive history. However, it wasn’t the car that had problems. Instead, it was the marketing. After all, the car may have been a gas-guzzler and a tad overpriced, but it was no less functional than a Mercury and that’s part of the reason why Ford lost $400 million within three years on that car. Part of the problem was the Edsel suffered from overblown advertising hype. Claims such as the car could float on air were spread. However, the car was almost identical to Ford’s Mercury without adding anything new. Mercury and the Edsel were manufactured in the same factory, which led to a mix-up of parts that resulted in technical issues that killed any demand there ever was. Top that with 1957’s recession and the Edsel was doomed before it ever launched.

Of course, the recession was a factor beyond Ford’s control, but it could have managed its quality control better and it could have made the Edsel different enough to appeal to the American public. As a business, you can never rest on your previous successes, you must always be innovating and as a marketer, it’s important to sell the reality, not the hype.

5. Ayds Candy

Ayds was a popular diet candy in the 1970s and early ’80s until it was saddled with the unfortunate luck of having the same sounding name as AIDS the disease. Not only that, but those battling the disease lost copious amounts of weight, so the product’s purpose became a cruel joke in more ways than just its name. Of course, the diet chew could not recover from the unavoidable association and eventually went out of business.

The story of Ayds is a lesson in rebranding and not doing it soon enough. The moment its product was confused with the disease, the company should have relaunched it with an entirely different name as if the old product never existed. When things change, you have to pivot fast. There is no sense in going down with the way things are when you can adapt and try to save yourself.

Conclusion

Marketing blunders and disasters happen, and these can give future marketers and aspiring ones to learn from them and avoid the same mistake. In this post, I shared with you 5 of the greatest marketing disasters in history & what we can learn from it.