What Marketers Can Learn from Bizarre, Laughable, and Generally Unsuccessful Products
Tales from the Museum of Product Failure
Why should the marketing success stories get all the glory? What about the flops, the failures, the misfires? Where’s the love for all the legendary busts that didn’t exactly take the world by storm?
These are questions that nagged innovation expert Samuel West for years, and that, ultimately, motivated him to open a museum dedicated to several dozen noteworthy marketing debacles. West, who for seven years worked as a researcher at Lund University, in Lund, Sweden, spent his days exploring innovation, creativity, and breakthrough concepts. West’s off-hours, on the other hand, found him amassing a collection of failed products. (Because honestly, who wouldn’t want an incredibly alarming electric-shock-producing face mask perched on your sideboard to spark some lively dinner-party conversations?)
Where’s the love for all the legendary busts that didn’t exactly take the world by storm?
The fruits of West’s amusing hobby might have remained confined to his home had he not happened upon the Museum of Broken Relationships, in Zagreb, Croatia. Perusing the tokens of lost love and derailed courtships, West, an organizational psychologist, had a brainstorm. “I just thought, Whoa, if they can do that, then I should open the Museum of Failure,” he told Smithsonian.com. “It was kind of a eureka moment.”
Thus was born the Museum of Failure, in Helsingborg, Sweden.
A Paean to the Peculiar, Unpopular, and Positively Ridiculous
A glimpse at the museum’s displays reveals a handful of products that were here and gone, as well as a hardy few that hung around for a while before facing the marketing music. Some we might remember. Others we’re glad we don’t. Regardless of their shelf lives, every one of them comes complete with a cautionary tale or two for marketers. Let’s explore a few of the classic flops West has immortalized in his shrine to the duds — and consider some of the more promising alternatives that ultimately emerged.
Betamax
It should come as no surprise that the Betamax videocassette recorder occupies a well-deserved place of honor in the museum. Remember this device? Maybe yours was that one family in the neighborhood that sprang for a Betamax instead of a VHS (video home system) player. It seemed like a good idea at the time, right?
One of two major players in the so-called video-format war, Sony’s Betamax traced its origins to the mid-1970s. With better resolution and image quality, slightly better sound clarity, and a significant head start, the device by all accounts should have been the clear-cut winner over the competing JVC recorder that made its debut a full year later. What ultimately doomed the Betamax, however, were its cost and Sony’s marketing misfires.
In pricing the units, Sony failed to take into account the fact that consumers tend to be fairly cost-conscious when it comes to shelling out hard-earned money for a nonessential — for some, a luxury — item. “Even when a product is objectively better than its competitor, if the cost is considerably more, it becomes a different decision,” a Team b. Strategy blog post noted. “In this case, cheaper was better. Sony failed to understand their market and it cost them.”
The Betamax illustrates the importance of thorough research and having a clear read on the marketplace.
The tech giant also missed the marketing mark with its cassette format. Sony touted the Betamax’s ability to record TV programs and movies, but because its tapes held a mere hour’s worth of programming, the company couldn’t compete with VHS tapes’ two-hour capacity. It became clear early on that the video-rental industry also would favor the VHS tape, which, with its longer format, could hold a two-hour film.
JVC edged out Sony in another big arena: licensing. JVC licensed its VCR technology to any manufacturer that was interested, resulting in competition for sales, and, in the long run, lower prices for consumers. Sony, meanwhile, was the sole manufacturer of the Betamax for 10 years, which meant higher prices to buy and rent its cassettes. Cheaper, more plentiful VHS tapes tipped the balance against the Betamax, and by 1981, sales of the device had sunk to just 25 percent of total VCR sales in the United States.
Failing to consider the bigger picture and understand its audience eventually cost Sony. Now a footnote in the history of consumer electronics, the Betamax illustrates the importance of thorough research and having a clear read on the marketplace.
Apple Newton MessagePad
Another notable electronics has-been that graces a shelf in West’s museum is the relatively short-lived Apple Newton. The Newton was a handheld PDA, or personal digital assistant, a term Apple coined to describe the new gadget. The idea was to build a device that had a pen, a radio that worked on a pager frequency, and templates for use with a Mac or PC — and to make it small enough to fit in a pocket. That was key. WIRED wrote about the Apple PDA in a 2013 article: “With Newton, Apple didn’t just set out to create a new device. It wanted to invent an entirely new class of computing: computers that could slip into pockets and go out into the world. In fact, the pocket was a core design requirement.”
“In the six years between its premature debut and untimely death, it wobbled and sputtered like a leaky balloon, neither soaring nor crashing.”
By today’s standards, the stylus-equipped unit was nothing fancy. Nor was it compact, compared to current devices. But at 7¼ inches long by 4½ inches wide, it did pass the all-important pocket test. You could use the handy gizmo to take notes, store contacts, manage calendars, and even send a fax. With all that going for it, what went wrong? A premature product launch brought on by competitor pressure (specifically, from the Palm Pilot), a weeklong lampooning of the unit’s handwriting-recognition capability in the Doonesbury comic strip (“egg freckles”!), and significant technical issues conspired to send the $699 message device to an early grave. TIME tech writer Harry McCracken noted that although 50,000 Newtons were sold in the three months following its launch, it didn’t exactly catch on. He wrote: “A lavish 1993 coffee-table book on the Newton project was titled Defying Gravity, but Newton’s problem was that it never quite took flight. In the six years between its premature debut and untimely death, it wobbled and sputtered like a leaky balloon, neither soaring nor crashing.”
From its launch, in 1993, to its eventual demise, in 1999, the Newton managed to stick around in various iterations, and while it never generated broad interest, looking back we can see traces of future Apple successes in the now-defunct device. The stylus gave way to a keyboard, and the Newton’s voice-recognition feature planted the seeds for Siri, now standard on the iPhone and iPad. That’s right. The Newton that Mike Doonesbury mercilessly drubbed pioneered much of the technology that later would be incorporated in today’s smartphones, and more importantly, introduced the then-novel idea that the computer could be taken outside the home or office. McCracken’s comments aside, in the longer view, perhaps the Newton defied a bit of gravity after all. (To read more about Apple, see our 2014 Britton Blog post.)
Harley-Davidson Fragrances
We see from West’s museum collection that failed products come in all shapes, sizes, and, apparently, scents. Take the Harley-Davidson colognes and perfumes that hit the market, in 1996. Yes, take them — away! That seemed to be the general consensus among the HOG crowd and pretty much everyone else. A perfect example of brand overextension, the colognes — Black Fire, Golden Sun, Territory, Free Space, Cool Spirit, Destiny, Fresh Spirit, Hot Road, and Legendary — failed to capture the hearts or wallets of the Harley-Davidson faithful. The line of fragrances was introduced along with a slew of other branded Harley-Davidson products at a time when the iconic biker brand was attempting to capitalize on its brand recognition through extended merchandising. Harley-Davidson shops began selling T-shirts, socks, cigarette lighters, ornaments, infant apparel, wine coolers (yes, you read that right; do I detect a heady exhaust bouquet?), and a variety of fragrances for men and women.
Not the most egregious of product faux pas, the colognes and perfumes nevertheless illustrate two basic tenets of marketing: Stick to your core values and focus on what you know best. “If your values are ‘strong, masculine, and very rugged,’ you shouldn’t be selling perfume or wine coolers. A range of baby clothes might also be a bad idea,” concluded a 2006 blog post that examined the Harley-Davidson product extensions. The author warned firms to beware of this type of brand dilution, which results when companies act on “the temptation to test loyalty to its limits by stretching the brand into other product categories.” What typically follows is a watered-down brand image, a lot of raised eyebrows, and, in Harley-Davidson’s case, a not-so-coveted spot in a museum devoted to flops. (A 2015 Britton Blog post took a close look at other Harley-Davidson marketing efforts.)
Coke BlāK and New Coke
Failures in the food-and-drink category also deserve attention, as West’s museum shelves attest. He showcases a couple of Coke blunders, including Coke BlāK, the coffee-flavored “carbonated fusion beverage” that failed to delight the cola-drinking world (although it no doubt kept those who downed it plenty alert). The museum features a bottle of the funky concoction, which enjoyed a brief two-year run before consumer disinterest forced the overly caffeinated soda off the shelves.
“Most people don’t realize that 80 to 90 percent of the time, innovations don’t work.”
Also showcased is Coke II (or New Coke, as it was first called), which proved not only unpopular but also controversial. Its 1985 unveiling marked the first time in the company’s 99-year history that Coke had deviated from its original, secret formula, which had been locked away in a vault for safekeeping, company officials announced at the time. TIME weighed in: “Even before the New Coke went on sale, consumers [said] they were nervous that the company would ‘ruin a good thing.’” Three months in, Coca-Cola bowed to consumer pressure and returned Coca-Cola Classic to its vocal and adoring fans, who, TIME’s Lily Rothman wrote, “were outraged that an American institution had been altered.” As it turns out, New Coke wasn’t a total failure. Coke sales were actually up 8 percent in May 1985 over the same month the previous year (although some of the increase may have been due to customers stocking up on all the beloved original Coke they could get their hands on).
Lesson learned — and vault reopened. To its credit, Coke took heed and responded swiftly to the outcry from its brand loyalists, and in the 30-plus years since the New Coke debacle, the soft-drink powerhouse has steered clear of any major formula tweaks to the iconic beverage. As museum founder West put it, “Every time you try something new, there is a huge risk of failure. Most people don’t realize that 80 to 90 percent of the time, innovations don’t work. The trick is to create an organizational culture that accepts failure, so that you can fail small, rather than failing big.”
Colgate Beef Lasagna
I saved my favorite museum artifact for last: Colgate’s brief foray into the frozen-food marketplace. That’s Colgate of red-and-white-toothpaste-tube fame. In what has to be one of the most ill-conceived marketing tie-ins in recent memory, Colgate, in the 1980s, introduced a frozen lasagna dinner that consumers could microwave, savor alongside a lovely Caesar salad, and then follow up with a thorough brushing and flossing. Genius! Or not. It’s another case of head-shaking brand overextension, and it proved enough of a marketing embarrassment that Colgate didn’t care to have its doomed frozen lasagna featured in the museum. Undeterred, West replicated the lasagna box and displayed it anyway. As for Colgate? It appears its frozen-meal days were short-lived. Again, the lesson here for marketers is clear: Stick to what you know and do best. For Colgate, that’s toothpaste, mouthwash, and floss. Period.
Take a Look — and Learn a Lesson
For the general public, a visit to the Museum of Failure promises to entertain and educate, and to even evoke a twinge of nostalgia. For marketers, a stroll through the displays should be something more: a reminder that miscues, inadequate market research, and a failure to remain true to your brand values could relegate your product to glass-case prominence in a failed-product hall of fame. That sort of notoriety no brand needs.
Marcia Kirlin
Freelance Contributor
BMDG
Photos: Shutterstock, Wikipedia, Amazon, Coca-ColaCompany.com, Pinterest, Mirror.co.uk
Originally published at www.brittonmdg.com.
