Download Brand Failures: The Truth About the 100 Biggest Branding Mistakes of All Time fb2

cool book wow

waffle on about obvious things....alll mistakes made are for big companies that can mostly pull themselves out of the sh** ...yes there were some cases stated on individual companys going belly up.....but not a good reference guide

Overall a good read and makes a good reference for many brands across many industries. Keep it close as you dicide what to do with your own brand.

Interesting but a little outdated for 2014. Although well written it also became a bit tiresome and repetitive.

Very good!

I read one chapter of this book online and it was so filled with misinformation, I would not bother to read the entire book. Haig claims that Sony's Betamax failed because Sony refused to license it to other companies. One of his "lessons learned" for Sony is "don't go it alone." Really? What about Sanyo,Toshiba, Aiwa, Pioneer, Zenith and NEC who all manufactured Beta VCRs at the peak of its production. According to 1985 Video magazine article, Sanyo actually outsold Sony in Beta format VCRs in 1984.

A 30 second Google search or look on Ebay would have shown him that Sony was not the only Beta manufacturer. Very lazy research at best. Can't imagine what misinformation is in the rest of the book.

Brands come and go at an ever-increasing pace these days. Mistakes are magnified and missteps in a local market carry over to the global market seemingly overnight. But can we learn from the mistakes of the past and better manage the present and future? There are definitely some lessons to be learned in the 2nd edition of Brand Failures: The Truth about the 100 Biggest Branding Mistakes of All Times by Matt Haig. It's worth reading if you own or manage a business, or if you're deciding whether to invest in a company. Just keep in mind that hindsight is 20/20, and pointing out mistakes after the fact is far easier than seeing them at the time.

Contents:
Introduction: Why brands fail; Brand myths; Why focus on failure?
Classic Failures: New Coke; The Ford Edsel; Sony Betamax; McDonald's Arch Deluxe
Idea Failures: Kellogg's Cereal Mates; Sony's Godzilla; Persil Power; Pepsi; Earring Magic Ken; The Hot Wheels computer; Corfam; RJ Reynolds' smokeless cigarettes; La Femme; Radion; Clairol's 'Touch of Yoghurt' shampoo; Pepsi AM; Maxwell House ready-to-drink coffee; Campbell's Souper Combo; Thirsty Cat! and Thirsty Dog!;
Extension Failures: Harley Davidson perfume; Gerber Singles; Crest; Heinz All Natural Cleaning Vinegar; Miller; Virgin Cola; Bic underwear; Xerox Data Systems; Chiquita; Country Time Cider; Capital Radio restaurants; Smith and Wesson mountain bikes; Cosmopolitan yoghurt; Lynx barbershop; Colgate Kitchen Entrees; LifeSavers Soda; Pond's toothpaste; Frito-Lay Lemonade
PR Failures: Exxon; McDonald's - the McLibel trial; Perrier's benzene contamination; Pan Am; Snow Brand milk products; Rely tampons; Gerber's PR blunder; RJ Reynolds' Joe Camel campaign; Firestone tires; Farley's infant milk
Culture Failures: Kellogg's in India; Hallmark in France; Pepsi in Taiwan; Schweppes Tonic Water in Italy; Chevy Nova and others; Electrolux in the United States; Gerber in Africa; Coors in Spain; Frank Perdue's chicken in Spain; Clairol's Mist Stick in Germany; Parker Pens in Mexico; American Airlines in Mexico; Vicks in Germany; Kentucky Fried Chicken in Hong Kong; CBS Fender; Quaker Oats' Snapple
People Failures: Enron; Arthur Andersen; Ratner's Planet Hollywood; Fashion Cafe; Hear'Say; Guiltless Gourmet
Business Cycle Failures: Lehman Brothers; Marconi
Rebranding Failures: Consignia; Tommy Hilfiger; ONdigital to ITV Digital; Windscale to Sellafield; Payless Drug Store to Rite Aid Corporation; British Airways; MicroPro;
Internet And New Technology Failures: Pets.com; VoicePod; [email protected]; WAP; Dell's Web PC; Intel's Pentium chip; IBM's Linux graffiti; boo.com; Google
Tired Brands: F. W. Woolworth; Oldsmobile; Pear's Soap; Ovaltine; Kodak; Polaroid; Rover; Moulinex; Nova magazine; Levi's; Kmart; The Cream nightclub; Yardley cosmetics
References; Index

Brand Failures is a fun and informative read on many levels. Haig devotes a page or more to most of the brands listed above, outlining the story behind the rise and fall of the brand or company. At the end of many of the stories, he lists one or more lessons to be learned from the failure. For instance, we can take Harley Davidson's foray into the branded perfume market. HD has an incredible brand loyalty in the market. But that doesn't mean that anything with the HD logo will be embraced. At the point that HD tried to create a perfume and aftershave, they overstepped their customer mind set. They did the same thing with an HD-branded wine cooler. Those items didn't fit with the image that their customers had of themselves, and as such they were a flop. HD learned from that, and cut back dramatically on the branded merchandise. What did they learn? That you need to focus on your brand values, you can't alienate your core customers, "lovemarks" need to be handled with care, and that less is more in many cases.

In retrospect, it's easy to see where many of these brands went wrong. boo.com spent copious amounts of money yet didn't have a functional web site. Polaroid went under as they didn't stay relevant in a world of digital photography (same with Kodak). Pets.com found out that charging less for an item than it costs you to sell it doesn't work over the long run (imagine that!) On the flip side, some things that were successful broke some of the very rules that doomed other offerings. For instance, tablet computers failed repeatedly until Apple made the iPad a runaway success. No one knew they needed or wanted a Walkman until they actually hit the market. If digital photography hadn't taken off, Kodak would have been lauded for staying focused. At some point, you have to take your best guess as to what the future will hold. There's also a good chance you'll be wrong.

Even with the hindsight issue, Brand Failures is a good read with valuable information. Some of the lessons lie outside of the "what happens in the future" question, and apply to all situations. Just make sure you don't take every lesson as a rule, and be prepared to think about what might or might not happen if you follow a particular course of action.

Disclosure:
Obtained From: Library
Payment: Borrowed

Brand Failures / 9780749444334

Who doesn't love reading about epic failures in marketing and product branding? A good "brand autopsy" can be both fun and educational, and can really help educate amateurs (like me) and marketing savvy experts alike on what pitfalls to avoid and how to properly package and market a new brand.

"Brand Failures" attempts to ambitiously tackle 101 famous branding mistakes and errors, from the classic "New Coke" to the failure of "Betamax" to Kodak's recent efforts to remain relevant in a world where casual consumers are increasingly turning away from film and to digital cameras. If there is a problem with this approach, it is that at 235 pages, each brand failure story is spread distressingly thin - most of the vignettes have less than 2 pages devoted to them. This simply isn't enough time and space to discuss all the factors that went into the failure of Enron, or Crystal Pepsi, or most of the other brands on display here.

The other problem with this approach is that some of the "autopsy analysis" statements seem a little questionable. It's easy, of course, to say when a brand has failed, but it's much harder to say WHY the brand has failed. Did "Earring Ken" really fail because his 'alternative' approach to masculinity alienated homophobic parents, or did he fail for the same reason that Ken sales have traditionally lagged behind Barbie - because little girls care more about the doll they can project upon? Did the leather substitute Corfam really fail because it didn't "feel" as good as real leather, or was it because the company failed to emphasize the animal-cruelty issue (which would still be a failure to correctly market a brand, but a different failure than what is given here)? Did the HotWheels PC and Barbie PC fail because parents didn't appreciate the overt gendered marketing or because parents in 1999 weren't quite ready to invest heavily in personal computers for their children?

In some ways, "Brand Failures" is a failure because the quick overview approach leaves a lot of questions unanswered and aspects unexplored. I would have liked to see this book about twice the length and containing half the products - a solid 10 pages or so per product would have given the reader a much better grasp of each product and a better look at why the brand *might* have failed, with heavier discussion on potential alternatives and competitors and market factors that may have doomed the product. In other ways, however, "Brand Failures" is a success because as a good overview of failed products, there is a lot of information here that probably can't easily be found elsewhere in a similarly compiled form. I think this would be a useful text for an "intro" course as a supplemental material to a meatier book, or an interesting foray into the subject for casual readers who are intrigued by the subject but don't want to get bogged down in a lot of extra details.

NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through NetGalley.

~ Ana Mardoll