There are hundreds of thousands of products that have met their demise during the last few decades.
Here are the five top Marketing disasters –
Life Savers Soda – Marketing disasters 1
Sometimes new products succeed because they fill a void of consumers.
The Life Savers Candy was developed in 1912. It was made by the chocolate maker Clarence Crane.
He wanted to find a sweet summer snack that wouldn’t melt in the sweltering heat.
The candy was a hit. But the same cannot be said for the Life Savers Soda that hit the market seven decades later.
While the drink — served in a cylindrical bottle. It was decorated with the same red, yellow, green and orange stripes as the candy wrapper —
It fared well in taste tests, it failed to catch on with consumers in the 1980s.
They were the ones who thought it would be too sweet and was like drinking candy from a bottle.
Tomato ketchup – Marketing disasters 2
Tomatoes are sold in seemingly every colour: green, purple, yellow, orange and the famous red.
However , consumers were not afraid to experiment and try new varieties at the store or their local farmers market.
But shoppers have come to expect ketchup made predominately out of tomatoes to come in one color — red — . They associated with one company, H.J. Heinz, which was selling more than 650 million bottles of the condiment each year.
In 2000, Heinz introduced EZ Squirt with a kid-friendly nozzle in “Blasting Green,” “Funky Purple” and even other mystery colours.
Unlike some other product failures, this one initially appeared to be a success for the Pittsburgh-based ketchup icon.
Each new color the company rolled out resulted in incremental sales volume, according to a story by Fast Company.
With the new products especially popular with children.
Overall, more than 25 million bottles of colored ketchup were sold.
This started pushing Heinz’s market share for ketchup to an all-time high of 60%.
But sales later softened as kids grew bored with the product. Parents got tired of seeing half-consumed bottles sitting in their fridge at home.They were hence reluctant to buy another one.
After sales continued to fall, EZ Squirt was pulled from the shelves by January 2006.
Ratner’s Group Marketing disasters – Marketing disasters 3
It’s hard not to feel sorry for Gerald Ratner. His family-run jewelery company was a darling of the 1991.
People knew about how he could sell products for such low prices – because it was a total crap.
Combined with a slow news day in tabloid newsrooms the following day led to a publicity storm .
This storm was the one that cost the company millions and Mr. Ratner his job.
The company also detached the family name, which only lives on in popular culture as a reminder of the incident. Committing a spectacular public relations gaffe is colloquially known as “Doing a Ratner”.
Pepsi – Marketing disasters 4
Sometimes a PR blunder can be resolved by fortunate timing.
The internet was getting up in arms over a Pepsi ad featuring Kendall Jenner.
The company, whose featured the Kardashian half-sister strolling up to a political protest and resolving it by doling out a can of Pepsi, was mocked.
People called it as tasteless and insensitive, given the divided political climate in the United States right now.
The company pulled the ad and apologized to Jenner.
But in a stroke of luck, another brand came along. It eclipsed the Pepsi controversy a few days later: The United Airlines.
The company must have breathed a sigh of relief as the internet’s fury was redirected.
Cigarettes marketing disaster – Marketing disasters 5
One of the first great PR debacles started off as a great triumph and foundation of the business itself .
It was when Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s New York-based nephew and the “Father of PR”, devised his “Torches of Freedom” stunt.
This was back in 1929.
He did this to associate smoking with the early feminist movement for his client, the American Tobacco Company. Both took off in popularity.
Decades later, the guilt of what he had helped to unleash led Mr.Bernays to devote his energies in retirement. He started to campaign on behalf of the anti-smoking lobby, Action on Smoking & Health.