With more and more brands coming in the market, the customer’s attention span is reducing day by day. A person is consciously or subconsciously exposed to many advertisements or marketing campaigns on a daily basis. Many products or brands fail to register in consumer’s mind and thus face failures. Let’s go through some great marketing failures:
KFC Free Chicken:
Sometimes, organisations get too excited or too generous under the name of promotions. In 2009, KFC offered it consumers free chicken to anybody who downloaded a coupon available on their website. However, they weren’t prepared for the 4 million people who turned up at KFC branches across America. There wasn’t enough food and many branches refused to serve. $42 million worth chicken was consumed free by people. This was one of one of the greatest mistakes while marketing.
McDonald’s free treat campaign:
During the 1988 Olympics, McDonald’s announced one product free on every medal that U.S. would win. They probably forgot to consider the fact that the greatest competitors of U.S. weren’t participating in the Olympics that year i.e. Russia and Germany. This helped the states to win 178 medals out of which 83 were gold. This marketing campaign was a great financial hit for the company.
Kurlon Mattresses:
In 2012, Kurlon mattresses came out with an advertisement which showed Malala Yousafzai shot by a bullet, falling on Kurlon mattresses and bouncing back to receive the humanitarian award. This advertisement, for all reasons, was one that should never have been created. This also was one of the examples of marketing failure.
Victoria’s secret:
In 2014, Victoria’s Secret came out with a campaign titled “The Perfect Body” and every woman showed in the ad was slim and had the smallest waist size possible. This advertisement received an extensive backlash from the audience and they had to pull it down from the screen.
New Coke:
In late 1800’s, Pepsi tried to create a perception about Coke as ‘the kid’s cola’ in the minds of the consumer. It resulted in declining sales of the product. To counter this problem, Coke came out with a new formula Coke- New Coke. However, consumers did not like the product at all and it had to be pulled out from the shells in just three months and the classic Coke was again restored. This also one of the greatest marketing failure.
So, these were some tips to avoid when marketing a product. There were also failures like Crystal Pepsi, Yogurt Shampoo, etc. but these were the greatest of them. This article isn’t just meant to show the failures of the campaign, but we also want you to learn from the mistakes some great advertising and marketing teams made. So, when launching an advertising or marketing campaign, always ensure to take a look around the market and try to avoid these mistakes while marketing your product. We understand that your startup is very dear to you. Just take the required protection and keep learning.